Masquerade
by E Kelly
Summary: Though you have been raised as a human being, you are not one of them. The story of the Last Son of Krypton's life, and his singular love affair with Lois Lane. S:TM, SII, SR, comics amalgam
1. Chapter 1

**Masquerade**

By E Kelly

Disclaimer: I do not own Superman and I don't make any money off of him.

This is all just my little way of pulling all the threads of the movies together to make a single story. Liberal dustings of comics lore, and even splashes of Elliot S! Maggin, Smallville and Lois & Clark showed up as it got longer and longer (originally this was supposed to be something along the lines of maybe 10 chapters). It is finally complete after 2 and half years, three states and grad school.

* * *

His first autumn on earth, Clark had run crying into Martha Kent's arms. She held the trembling little boy, who clung to her as she stroked his hair.

"Whatis it, honey? Clark, what's wrong? Are you hurt?" She was looking him over frantically. This first year had been hard, harder than she and Jonathon could ever have imagined. How could they have known? Back then, they still didn't understand what exactly Clark was.

He'd looked up at her with tear-stained eyes, "It hurts, Momma." He touched his chest and fear blazed through her. Not something internal – they couldn't do anything about that. "I can hear them," he said softly. "They're all dying."

"Who?" she said urgently. "Who do you hear?"

"The…" He was trying to talk around his hard breath, "the bees."

Martha stared at him, astonished. Then she pulled him close. "Oh, Clark. It will be all right."

"It's too cold and they're dying. I can keep them warm, Momma," he said, muffled in her neck. "But I'd need to stay by the hive. Can I? Please? I'd stay all night. I can stay for days. I can -"

She shushed him, holding him close and whispering to him while he cried himself out that he couldn't do it, that he couldn't save the bees, that it would be against nature if he did.

* * *

After his astounding display of strength that first day (a boy of three years lifting a truck with a smile, a terrifying, unbelievable sight), he had fallen asleep in her arms, sweet-faced and perfect.

What a fight she and Jonathon had had in the kitchen! After she'd lain him down on the quilt that covered their old bed and come downstairs, Jonathon, frightened, started talking quietly about who they could take him to. She listened. The practical mind of a woman born of generations of farmers even agreed with him. What was different was dangerous. What was unknown could upset the delicate, fragile balance of survival. And this, all of it, from the smoking crater to the boy's angelic smile, was beyond belief.

Yet, in spite of her common sense, she asked, "But what will they do to him, Jonathon?"

"I don't –" she bit her lip to see her proud husband's hand shake on the back of the chair that seemed to be supporting him, "know. But it – we have to, we –"

"He's just a child," she said softly.

"He's young, Martha," Jonathon snapped. "But he is not a child."

She closed her eyes, tried to keep her temper in check. Then she looked at him and told him simply, "Don't you ever say that again."

"Martha! Get a hold of –"

"I mean it, Jonathon. Those words had best not ever pass your lips a second time," she said. "I don't know where he's from or how he came here, but we found him. He came to us – so don't you ever deny what he is!"

"Deny what h-" Jonathon's breath went out of him for a second. "He picked up that truck! I'm not the one denying here! Martha," he came to her, took her by the shoulders, looked into her eyes, "think. How could we – what if whoever lost him comes looking for him? What if he goes wild? Even if none of that – what if people found out where we'd got him?"

Visions played in her mind, horrors to match the wonders they'd seen that day, her own neighbors come for them with shotguns and dogs. She clutched at Jonathon, staggering under the weight of mystery and alienness. He was right, she bowed her head against his chest, her hands straining on his thick arms, her heart pounding painfully in her chest. He was right. They had to take him to someone else. They had to give him up.

She raised her head, when she at last felt she could bear it, and saw Jonathon, white-faced, staring over her shoulder. She turned.

He stood there, naked, small, swaying slightly. He was sweating, his dark hair matted to his head, his skin flushed. His wide eyes gazed up at them, and then he fell.

"Oh my god, oh my god," Martha whispered as they bent over him. She felt his face, his small, hard shoulders. "He's burning up!" She scooped him into her arms and his eyes rolled. He whimpered softly. "Get some water in the tub!" And she moved for the stairs.

Jonathon caught her, "No, you go. Give him here."

She held the boy more tightly, "Jonathon-"

He spoke swiftly, "In case he kicks, Martha! Give him here! Go!"

She handed him over carefully, tears of fear rolling down her face even while she moved, running up the stairs. Jonathon came right behind her, holding the boy loosely, eyes close on him. The heat coming off his little body made sweat spring up on Jonathon's skin. They burst into the bathroom, Martha spinning the knob, sending a stream of cool water into the white basin. Jonathon stood behind her, looking down at the boy, who moaned again, and trembled.

"Get back, Martha."

Jonathon bent and gently laid the boy down in the half-inch of water. The child's muscles shook, and the floor quivered, pipes attached to the tub creaking. Jonathon stepped back quickly. He took Martha's hand, and they waited.

The boy's eyes fluttered and his breath became ragged. Water climbed up his sides. Martha's eyes widened as tiny bubbles formed under the water's surface. She reached to slow the water's flow as it lapped at his cheeks. She felt the hot vapor on her skin a moment before the water boiled.

"Ice," she barely recognized the whispering voice as her own. Looking at Jonathon, she said, "We need ice."

The afternoon and night were a hell of impossibility and waiting, sick with fear that he might die. Heat and cold, for hours and hours, Jonathon had to go to town twice when they ran out of ice. And the worst of it was that she could only watch, afraid to touch, as he shook and cried weakly. But he'd taken a chunk out of the tub's rim when a muscle spasm made his hand lash out. So she had to watch until she thought she would scream.

At last, at last, four o'clock in the morning, the water was only tepid, the boy feeling still warm, but he was quiet, no longer seeming feverish. His sleepy eyes watched them move as Jonathon lifted him out of the tub and Martha bent to dry him off. They laid him on a pallet of blankets on the floor and Martha told Jonathon to get some sleep while she propped her back against the wall a few feet from the boy. One look at his wife's face and he knew it was done; it'd be no good offering to stay up and let her sleep. She wasn't going to. One look at the boy's face, and he knew it was done for him too. He'd never seen anything so small fight so hard and so long.

He reached to stroke the dark hair. It was soft and fine. Sitting back against the wall beside her, he put an arm around Martha's shoulders. She leaned in against him as they watched the boy's eyes slowly close in exhaustion.

Jonathon said, "We'll call him Clark."

Martha smiled tiredly, "That to remind me if this all goes bad wrong, that it's my fault?"

"Uh huh," Jonathon said, leaning his head back. "That's just what I was thinking."

They stayed there until well after sun up, just watching him sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Later he'd understood – life was a fine-tuned thing; every living creature on earth built for the air, the dirt, the radiation of the sun. Every living creature but him.

The temperature spikes were commonplace the first couple of years, though they tapered off after that and stopped altogether when he was around ten or so. His skin reacted strangely to being in the sun, and to being indoors those first two years too. There were rashes, almost like burns, and sometimes he'd go pale white and feel weak for a day. In between these bouts though his strength grew, and by the time the rashes stopped when he was seven even an axe wouldn't cut him. And then there were his eyes. He had terrible headaches that started with pains in his eyes and seemed connected to sunlight. They came on sudden and he would ball himself up, tucking his hands under his arms and twitching – from very early on he understood how fragile everything, and everyone, around him was – sometimes for an hour or more. He had terrible eyesight, but a thick pair of glasses helped somewhat (Martha had to get them second hand, she and Jonathon were afraid to let a doctor examine his eyes. They were afraid to let a doctor get anywhere near the boy.) Around the time his headaches stopped, his eyes began to improve. Then one day when he was thirteen, he didn't need the glasses at all anymore.

He'd grown up a quiet child because of these things. Martha and Jonathon kept him close to them and away from others for the first few years. They hadn't known what all he could do, having to learn day by day. They had to catch him each time he'd say something that revealed a perception they didn't have. He'd had so much trouble seeing because he saw so much, wavelengths humans could only detect with machines, distances binoculars couldn't reach, tiny details that would take a microscope to fathom. His sense of hearing, smell, even touch and taste was broader, more sensitive. It took practice to filter things, and time to learn how to speak only of the fraction of them that others around him could sense.

He felt what torture it was for his mother and father to send him to school, and he knew in his childish way that he had to be careful, so careful all the time. They'd told him how if anyone found out he could be taken away, and that struck terror into his own little heart. So he realized he needed to watch and learn to mimic those around him so they wouldn't see how different he was from them.

He met Pete there, who was even quieter and more watchful than he was. It was a revelation, that besides his differences, there were similarities too. Pete was small, and fascinated by strangeness, so other boys bullied him a great deal. He'd never been so relieved as when he met Clark, who was anything but small. Not that Clark ever fought on his behalf, but just him being there helped cut down on the taunting. Clark shied from boyish contests, didn't play sports. He was always afraid he'd hurt someone. He was always afraid they'd see, that he'd do something to give himself away. His father had drilled it into his head from the first days, for once Jonathon had decided the boy was theirs, he was fierce in his protection. Their whole lives spiraled in around their secret; their precious, extraordinary boy. They had to teach him how to lie.

He'd thought, as he grew up, that this was to be his whole life. That he would have to hide forever. His notion of where he'd come from was always vague, memories floating in a dark ocean deep inside him, a voice imparting knowledge fantastic and strange. But it was like a dream, half-forgotten on waking, only enough so he could understand. He was not human.

Still, he never forgot the mornings, when he was a boy, walking out of the house's creaking screen door to the fence beyond the barn. He'd hang on the rough slatted boards and watch the sunrise, listening to his father preparing for work, his mother already working in the kitchen. He breathed deep the still, country air and loved being alive. He loved the warmth of the sun and the colors that this world had no names for; he loved the tall yellow grass and the deep blue sky. He was not of this world, but it was the only world. He felt its pulse in his very veins.


	3. Chapter 3

As he grew, and the infirmities fell away, not only his body, but his power grew in spurts of impressive proportions. It got to where he could lift the tractor with one hand, and the most amazing of things, that he kept even from his parents for awhile – he could _fly_. The first few times, he laughed nonstop out of sheer delight. It was miraculous.

As a teenager, he'd long since mastered his body and learned how to never reveal himself. His careful discipline turned inward then, for puberty appeared to be little different in some respects for him. His emotions flared like his body temp used to, but the only ice he had to work with was his own. So, again, he stayed back from others, remaining cautious and shy.

His height, his looks, even his awkwardness brought him attention from girls. Not a lot of them, but a few. This was a confusion he hadn't looked for, and couldn't share. Not even with Pa, who knew anyway. Jonathon Kent was a laconic man, so all he said was, "It's not easy for a man to do right by a woman, son. But it's important."

So when he kissed Lana for the first time and felt his passion rise, he stopped. She hadn't understood why he walked away from her, and the tears on her pretty face had come near to breaking his heart. But he couldn't do it to her, couldn't ask her to be his when he was something so other. He knew he would weaken if they got closer, that he would tell her. Lana was too sweet, too pure and uncomplicated. She thought he was just a boy like any other. If she knew the truth, she would shrink back from him in horror. An alien.

* * *

His father died. He heard Jonathon's heart stop, heard his blood stop flowing, watched his nerves shrivel. Right in front of him, and he had been helpless to stop it. His grief was so powerful that he ran to escape it. Then he flew, but he could not outdistance it. He hovered above the earth, tears freezing in the cold stratosphere, in so much pain that he could not focus, could not block out all the sounds of the world. Jonathon's words haunted him. _You are here for a reason._

The human activity below him was a cacophony, engulfing him. For the first time, he wished that he was not here. He wished he didn't look like them, didn't feel like them. Selfishly, cruelly, he wished Ma and Pa had never found him. He wished he could float here forever, above it all, away from all the chaos and the pain. Clark closed his eyes against the waves of loss rocking him. But then one sound made its way through all the rest. It was a child, whimpering in pain and fear, calling weakly.

"Mei-mei! Mei-mei!"

Without thought, he moved, streaking down from the sky, circling the globe, following the sound to its source. In an abandoned building deep in the slums of Shanghai, a little boy of about seven was trapped under sheet rock and plaster where the ceiling had caved. As Clark lifted him out of the rubble, the boy struggled to get down in spite of his broken leg. He reached over Clark's shoulder, straining his arms towards the corner, "Mei-mei! Mei-mei!"

Clark looked through the debris and saw, slumped under a heavy block of concrete that was slipping, a tiny girl, perhaps two years old, unconscious, helpless. He seized the block in one hand, still holding the boy in the other arm, and tossed the concrete away. It landed with a _thunk_ that sent dust up into the air, covering all three of them in a fine white powder. The boy stared at him until his little sister sat up and started to cry.

Clark Kent, eighteen years old, the child of another star, held them, telling them in his strange language that they would be all right. Somehow, they understood. He carried them to the hospital, finding his way through the dingy back streets by way of sound and smell and x-ray vision. Then he disappeared as quickly as he could. When he alighted back in Kansas, he found his mother sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, watching the sunset, her eyes dull and far away as they often were since Jonathon's death. He kissed her cheek. She came out of her reverie to smile at him, and take his hand.

He knew then that he would have to go soon. He couldn't say it to her yet. But he could feel it growing inside him. How far he would travel he could not have imagined.


	4. Chapter 4

_My son. You do not remember me._

Twelve years he was gone, most spent in the Fortress, at last learning who he was. He saw his natural father and his natural mother; he heard their voices. He had not been abandoned. He had been saved. The last son of Krypton.

He was taken across galaxies, across time, discovering secrets of the universe that would remain hidden to humans for thousands of years to come.

_Live as one of them, Kal-el. Discover where you strength and your power are needed. But always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage._

He returned to Kansas. Martha looked up one day to see him standing on the porch, beyond the screen door. She rose slowly as he stepped inside. The she ran to him, threw her arms around him.

"Clark!"

He held her, hiding his surprise at how she had aged, for somehow the time that had passed seemed like the blink of an eye to him now. And that surprise was nothing compared to the shock at realizing – he was no longer Clark.

He hid that from her as well, letting her feed him hearty meals and homemade pies, sleeping in his old bed. She asked him about his plans. He told her he would leave soon for Metropolis.

"And do what?" Martha asked.

"Everything that I can."

Martha could only watch this stranger in her son's body; she could only watch, just like when he was a child. But she wouldn't let it shake her. At every opportunity, she touched him, patting his shoulder, ruffling his hair, caressing his cheek with her mother's hand, and giving him big ole hugs every morning and night.

_I don't care if you are from another planet, boy_, she thought with a sidelong glance at his remote profile, _you're going to know your Ma loves you. And that's that._

It took a few days, but a little warmth came back into his smile.

Martha made him visit with Pete and Lana too. The two of them had married three years back, and she thought it would do him good to see two old friends so happy.

They walked across the fields to the road back of the Kent farm, Lana and Pete full of stories about everyone they'd known in high school – who had stayed in Smallville, who had gone and where, funny stories, tragic stories, marriages, deaths, births. He listened, enjoying the nostalgic glow of the evening. He climbed up to sit on the fence just like he had so many other nights with these two. He'd picked a blade of wheat and he examined it with his fingers, the scent of earth and growing things filling him up. This was it. This was what he was meant to protect.

Lana had propped her chin on her crossed arms set on the fence's top slat. Pete climbed through to the other side and looked up to the stars coming out in the darkening sky. Then he turned to smile at Lana, putting his hand over one of hers. Her face lit with a soft light and she kissed his fingers lightly.

_Yes_, Kal-el thought, looking up at the endless velvet of space above these two people and their simple gesture of love, _this is it._


	5. Chapter 5

Kal-el stood on a Metropolis street corner, awash in a sea of humanity. He listened to the thousands of conversations going on up and down the avenue, in the buildings around him, across the whole city if he wished. His eyes rested on a bus station shelter with a poster pasted on the side. On the white surface was a simple logo, a globe, and the words **Know Your Planet**. Looking up at the building beside him, topped with a similar globe, he walked in for his first day as Clark Kent, reporter.

He patterned his new persona on (forgive him) Pete in junior high; pitched up nasally voice that stammered, hunched shoulders and a walk that teetered between camel strides and mincing little steps. As he stepped into the chaotic newsroom, no one, absolutely no one, noticed him.

_Perfect._

It took him ten minutes to get someone to stop and point out Perry White's office. Inside, mounted high around the walls were screens, eight of which displayed 24-hour news channels from around the world, silenced, but with English captions boxed at the bottoms. Eight more showed the online editions of newspapers, similarly presented from cities dotting the entire globe. Everything was right. Here he could stay invisible and watch over all of them.

Perry was no-nonsense, all up front, get the story, sell the newspaper and everything else would take care of itself. He reminded Clark of the half-bulldog, half-hound that patrolled Jones' feedlot, barking efficiently and determinedly, and ready to clamp teeth to flesh if you didn't listen.

He was feeling a smile, probably too genuine of one, breaking across his face. He could do it. From this vantage point, he could be guardian of them all.

"There's no such thing as the Great Story that just falls in your lap, Kent," White was saying emphatically. "Nobody "gets" a great story. A good reporter makes them great."

In the middle of that sentence the door swung open and a second voice chimed right alongside Perry's, saying the exact same words in the exact same cadence. A dark-haired woman brushed past him, instantly diverting Perry with a non-stop patter that perfectly matched the editor's 'the news game is the only game' attitude. She was neither tall nor short, not voluptuous nor thin. She had long fingers, a voice that was musical, like hot dancehall jazz and she smelled like oak and smoke and flame. She was painting Perry a picture of a headline in the air.

"Making Sense of Senseless Killings by Lois Lane."

She was still going at Perry when she nipped the bottle right out of Clark's hands and rapped its top on the desk, handing it back without even looking at him. It wasn't until the bottled had fizzed and spurted all over that she finally paused long enough to see him. Meanwhile Perry was growling and pushing them out of the office.

She stood, one hand on her hip, her head cocked slightly to the side and swept an assessing gaze over him.

"Any more at home like you?" she asked, a trace of condescending amusement on her face.

He clutched his briefcase to his chest and wondered if this was what it felt like to a human when he looked them over, when he looked them through.

"Not really – no," he said, his voice tinged with wonder.

She cocked an eyebrow, lips curving a little further, "Didn't think so."

Distance, he reminded himself. You are not one of them. It was never a problem to remember that – except with her. Every bit of her hard-driven, mercurial, lightning-fast mind fascinated him. He'd seen other galaxies but he'd never seen anything like her. Oh, there were others as cynical, as fast-talking, as career-obsessed, even one or two who approached her insatiable curiosity, but he could see it in all of them. They were afraid, afraid of something, some part of life. But Lois didn't know what fear was.

He had been waiting – it'd been two weeks in Metropolis already – waiting for the moment to reveal himself. He couldn't keep those thoughts in his head though, walking beside her as she cursed domesticity and plotted her ambush of the President. He was so mesmerized that he followed her right into the Ladies room. As he trudged down the stairs alone, he felt such a fool that he wasn't listening. He didn't hear the helicopter go out of control on the roof. Until he stepped out of the front doors, he didn't hear her screaming in terror.

In an instant he was in the air, a flash of blue and red. He had been waiting, hesitating, knowing that to accomplish his goal he would have to let the world see him, and fearing the reaction. All of that was driven out of him. She was in danger.

He caught her, slowing so the impact was slight. Her scream cut off as she stared at him.

"Easy, Miss. I've got you."

Even though a second before she had been plunging to her death, Lois looked at him wide-eyed and demanded, "You've got me? Who's got you?"

He laughed softly. Her arms went around his neck.

_Perfect._

A rending of metal above made her turn her head up and gasp. He felt her body tense, her eyes never leaving the falling helicopter, as if she intended to catch it herself. Instead, when she saw his hand reach up, she shifted her weight to get out of his way, hanging on his shoulder. He could practically hear the wheels in her mind turning out the coming article even as awe stole her breath away. She felt the hitch in his flight as he plucked the plunging mass of metal out of the air and turned eyes on him that said, This cannot be happening. You cannot be real.

But she wasn't afraid of him.

When he set her down and lowered the helicopter, he wanted to laugh out loud, seeing her speechless. He'd saved her. He looked up at the sky. He was going to save them all, as many of them as he could. It had begun. His life had finally begun.


	6. Chapter 6

It was incredible and absurd and amusing to observe the furor he'd caused. Everyone everywhere the next day was talking about him. He stood right in their midst, listening. He knew it wasn't finished yet. He still had to tell them. He still had to tell her.

Alighting silently on her balcony, he said, "Good evening, Ms. Lane."

She started and spun around to face him. He considered just falling off the building under the heat of her gaze. Picking up her pad and pen she raised an eyebrow and said, "Why don't we start with the outfit?"

That threw him. He looked down at himself. "I suppose it is a little …retro," he said. "But once it was the height of fashion."

"Where – in a circus?" she asked, her expression carefully sardonic. She was trying not to let him see that she was impressed, but he could hear her racing heartbeat. "Of course the world often resembles a circus, so I'll let that one go for the moment. How about the tales that you can see through walls?"

He nodded, "There's a lot more to light than h-," he caught himself, "people can see. Many wavelengths go right through solid objects. I have the ability to focus on more of the spectrum than just visible light."

"Like an x-ray machine," she said, noting down 'x-ray vision' on her pad.

"That's the general idea," he said, moving closer. He liked the way her eyes kept flicking up as she tried to look at him without seeming to, until he realized that it made her nervous for him to be so near. He backed away. Jor-el's voice resonated in his mind – again.

She noted his movement with a sidelong glance. "The police said that last night you were shot at, hit by a car and punched through a brick wall. Can anything hurt you? Do you feel pain at all?"

"No," he said. Not any more.

Her green eyes fixed on him, clear and sharp, "How is that possible? What made you this way?"

His chest expanded with his deep breath, the shield upon it rising, "I am not of this world."

Lois' eyes widened and she asked carefully, "And what world are you 'of'?"

"The planet Krypton." The words hung in the air between them, his secret at last spoken aloud.

"The … planet…" she breathed. "You're an – "

"Alien," he said.

Lois shook her head as if to clear it. He realized he was holding his breath. Would he see it in her eyes? Would she –

"This is incredible!" she exclaimed, her excitement rushing over him in a surge of energy that he felt all over his skin. "But how? You look like a human man – how is that possible? How did you get here? Are there more of your kind? Where's Krypton? What – "

He held up a hand, inwardly laughing in relief at her barrage of questions, "One at a time, pl-"

But she didn't give him time to finish, "The 'Great Story' never falls in your lap, my ass!" She practically sang, "Perry is going to faint. He's going to kiss me. Right on the mouth. Oh my god – talk!"

He caught himself staring at her more than once over the next hour. She'd sat on the short wall ringing a bed of plants, curling one leg under her, bending her head over her pad, scribbling notes as fast as she could. He couldn't stop staring because each revelation only deepened her interest, made her contemplate him more curiously.

"Krypton was pretty far away," he told her. "Another galaxy as a matter of fact."

"Was?" she asked.

He nodded, "It no longer exists. There was an instability at its core, and it tore the planet apart. So," her cynical mask had melted at the loss in his words and sadness tinged her eyes, "no, there are no others. I am the last," he said.

Silence wrapped around them. Lois reached and put her hand on his arm.

"I'm sorry," she said.

He gazed at her, and for a few moments Lois Lane was not aware of anything in the world except his impossibly blue eyes. "Well, that's enough of the heavy stuff," she said, tearing her gaze away before she actually swooned or something lame like that. "Got to please the masses – how fast do you fly?"

A smile pricked up the corner of his mouth. How did she do that? The woman had really good timing. That was exactly what he needed right now.

He held out a hand to her, "Let's find out."

Lois' face went through about twenty emotions in half as many seconds. Her eyes never leaving his face, she dropped her pad and pen to the floor. Exhilaration raised her color as she took his hand in a firm grip. He heard her intake of breath when he put his hand on her waist and stepped up close behind her. With a movement so gently she barely felt it, he lifted her a few inches and placed her feet atop his as they left the ground.

He had never shared this with anyone, the sheer ecstatic joy of flight. She laughed in delight in his arms that night as they soared above the city. When he concluded a long zooming sweep out over the harbor by stopping in mid-air, she gasped, her hands tightening on his. Slowly, slowly, her body relaxed while they floated with dark water stretching away behind them and Metropolis' lights shining far below.

"It's exquisite," she whispered.

A breeze caught her hair, stirring it against his neck. He spoke close to her ear, his breath warm on it. "Besides the story, Lois – I'm a strange visitor from another planet. That doesn't disturb you?"

She shrugged, looking over her shoulder at him, "You haven't said 'take me to your leader' so I'm not too worried. He's going to want to talk to you by the way. As are all the other Presidents and Prime Ministers on earth. You're making the history of the human race just by breathing." She turned carefully, holding onto one iron arm and he slipped the other around her waist to keep her secure. "Of course it disturbs me. The world just – isn't the same any more. You drop out of the sky and start saving lives," she laughed, "How can that be real? I can accept the alien part more than I can the selfless hero of the people. _That's_ what doesn't exist here. Anyone who's ever tried to live that way on earth has ended up with a bullet in their head. It disturbs me – it's going to disturb a lot of people. They're going to be afraid of your power."

"I know," he looked down at Metropolis, his eyes turning inward. Lois contemplated him for a long moment.

"I was thinking," she said, "it doesn't take much courage to step in front of bullets if you know they won't hurt you. But I think… I think you must be a pretty brave guy after all."

His eyes returned to her, along with a small smile that stole Lois' ability to breathe. "You're a pretty brave woman."

She grinned and shook her head, "Just not always too bright when I'm following a lead. Sometimes it pays off though. Hey, how would you feel about a book? I'd write it and all you'd have to do –" her words cut off as he laughed out loud and they were speeding through the air, going dizzingly fast until she laughed too, helplessly, deliriously.

He set her down on the balcony. They were both breathless. Their eyes caught, held –

_You are not one of them._

He stepped back. "Good night, Lois."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N** – Whew, thanks for the reviews of the last chapter, y'all. I was a little nervous about rewriting that scene. I really appreciate all reviews and comments as I try to pull this off!

* * *

It was enough to be near her as Clark Kent. It was enough to be near her and to be Superman. (And he wasn't ashamed to admit to Ma that _that_ took a little getting used to.) He could do what he was born to do, and if there were still some who hated and feared him for it, he could bear that to save the lives he saved. The few paranoids and their websites were still less disconcerting than the hoards who worshipped him. They called themselves Supergroupies and they had volunteer watch stations all over, reporting on sightings and with a message board full of the strangest of comments. And then there was the Church of New Krypton….

He did meet with the President, who commended him for his good deeds and proclaimed the friendship of the United States to him (on the advice of his good old boy advisors, "Claim him, Mr. President. The rest of the world will piss their pants to think he's ours.") As he flew away from the White House grounds he heard the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Situation Room beneath the West Wing discussing possible scenarios – some in which they co-opted him for military operations, some military solutions for if they should ever need to 'neutralize' him.

None of this mattered, though, compared to the grateful faces of good people lifted from disaster and death. Nothing mattered when an eight-year-old girl, Matrika, threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek while tears poured down her face.

In a choked whisper in his ear, she said, "Thank you for saving my mom, Superman."

How could anything else matter?

Being a mild mannered reporter worked as he'd hoped. Reporters kept odd office hours and any cell phone call could be a lead that had to be followed _right now_. It made taking off at a moment's notice easy to explain. It also made it easier to keep an eye on Lois. Twice in the month that followed he had to step in to keep her from getting hurt as she was tracking down a story on Infinitie Technologies, a biotech firm she was certain was breaking the law. They were – creating dangerous cybernetic implants sold on a thriving black market. The company rode the edge of legitimacy and it took all of the evidence Lois uncovered to convict them. In the meantime she managed to nearly get her body invaded by nanobots when she broke into the lab, and then the company hired thugs to throw her off a pier. That had been enough to convince him and the whole thing ended up in a pitched battle with cybernetically enhanced experimental subjects – innocent people he had to be careful not to harm until he could neutralize the implants controlling them.

Still, what he remembered most clearly about it all was setting Lois safely on her feet, soaked to the bone. She was shivering as he tore away the heavy chains that had drug her under, quaking as her body released the abject terror of the dark moments before and she absorbed that she was alive.

They stood only inches apart and he moved his large hands slowly up and down her arms, letting the powerful warmth of his body pull the cold from her.

"I think the Board wants you dead," he said.

"The feeling's mutual," she replied, looking up at him as strength came back into her eyes. "But I'll settle for exposing them on tomorrow's front page."

A voice spoke clearly in his mind, _You're done. She's safe. Go now._ But he didn't move. It was enough to be near her as Clark. It was better to be near her as Clark, because he had to be near her and Clark she tolerated with varying degrees of amusement and irritation. She never gave him her full attention. That was better, because this – her face would not release him, the strong planes of her cheekbones, the determined set of her mouth, her challenging green eyes.

She put a hand on his chest, the movement curious, intimate, and questioning. He felt as if the touch went through his impenetrable skin and muscle, deep into the viscera at his center.

Lifting a hand, he brushed feather-light fingertips over her cheek. Her skin felt like a cool evening breeze. Smiling softly at her, he said, "Be careful, Lois." And he forced himself away from her, taking to the skies.

It was only two days after, the Infinitie story broken wide open and she was off on another lead, another hunch. A couple of small Metropolis real estate agencies were buying up land all along the length of eastern California. She'd been gone nine hours when he found out. And then Luthor called him.

It had not been enough. Nothing had been enough. When he heard her dying gasp, tiny amid the grinding of earth and stone, he nearly fell from the sky. His despair as he held her limp, breathless body brought him to his knees.

_You are not one –_

He bent and gently, tenderly, kissed her lips. He tasted only dirt and death.

_Ashes to ashes, the country preacher intoned over Jonathon's grave. Dust to dust._

He laid her on the ground.

They would all die, every one of them, for humans were fragile and flawed and… beautiful… Jor-el's voice, speaking the wisdom of the ages, of the births and deaths of creatures, worlds, galaxies. Martha's voice, Everything has to die, Clark. Nature made us this way. Limitation is the natural order, Kal-el. You, most of all, must remember this.

But Lois lay dead at his feet and it was the heart of a man bleeding in his chest and this he could not bear, _would NOT –_

He defied Nature, defied his parents' teachings from two worlds. He defied logic and reason and broke the laws of existence, a crime he knew would have a heavy price.

As the car door slammed and she cocked that hand on her hip, growling, "That's the problem with Men of Steel; there's never one around when you need one!", he knew, come what may, that he would do it again.

For it was done. Should he live a thousand years, for him there was only her.


	8. Chapter 8

He tried returning to Kansas for a time. He needed the small familiarities of the farm, the sounds of the cicadas and bullfrogs in the night, time to think. He walked the old dirt roads and struggled to understand.

He was being hailed as Earth's Greatest Hero after stopping the earthquake. Analysts spoke for weeks on news channels around the globe of what would have happened had he not been there – North America wracked with disaster, the force of California's fall spawning an epic tsunami that would have swamped every landmass touching the Pacific. He had saved the world and all he really cared about was that he had saved her.

He leaned on the fence by the road at dusk, his hands shoved into his jeans' pockets, nodding at the driver of the truck that passed by. Jim Hankins, ran the hardware store in town. Like everyone here, he knew Clark, might tell a customer in from Kinsley or Garden City who asked about town news, "Well, Martha Kent's boy is visitin'. Quiet type, writes for the Daily Planet." That last would come out with understated Midwestern pride that a Smallville boy had made it in The Big City. One of their own.

He spread his hands before him, looked them over, remembering the feeling of speed and time bending in them. Yet, no matter what he could do, no matter where he came from, did he not have a soul like any other man? A soul that cried out at loss, a soul that rebelled against isolation –

He looked up at the sky, and spoke to the far distant stars.

"You gave me a chance at life when our whole world was dying, and I am grateful. But you were wrong, Father. You were wrong to tell me to live my life as a lie."

Back in Metropolis he let the familiar rhythm take him. Outwardly everything appeared the same – Clark made nervous suggestions at meetings and stumbled over wastepaper baskets, Superman appeared here, there and everywhere to avert death and stop crimes, Clark watched Lois with longing eyes, muttering in embarrassment whenever she caught him at it, Lois smiled vaguely at Clark and turned her own longing eyes to the sky.

As it had always been too, in no time she was in the middle of impending disaster.

"…and if I know Lois Lane, she'll come back with a one on one interview with the hydrogen bomb titled 'What Makes Me Tick'…" Perry's words faded back into the buzz of Metropolis as Superman streaked across the Atlantic towards Paris.

It was only a moment there, that he saw her, pulling her down from the elevator's undercarriage after he had stopped its accelerating plummet. She clung to him for a second and he held her trembling body close while the hydrogen bomb counted down above them.

Only a second because she quickly recovered herself, looking up at him with urgent eyes, "A bomb! There's a –"

"I know," he said, setting her safely on the catwalk. He took one more moment, his warm hand clasping hers, "Are you all right?"

She looked down at their hands, then back at him. She nodded. She saw it in his eyes, saw how something had changed. He felt her bookmark the moment as her eyes promised, oh, we are going to come back to _this_.

One corner of his mouth quirked into a smile, and he ascended, carrying the danger away, far away from Earth.

It was only two days later that Perry sent Lane and Kent to Niagra Falls.

Lois was royally annoyed at the assignment (not least because it meant a weekend playing Clark's wife, as if he needed any more opportunity to crush all over her). She determined to bulldoze through it and get on to meatier stories – and get back to Metropolis where she had some chance of finding him, talking to him, following up on that heart-stopping moment in Paris.

He felt something for her. She hadn't imagined it. When he found her on that road in Nevada, she'd thought for an instant that he had been about to kiss her. She'd told herself afterwards that it was all a silly fantasy, that every woman he'd ever saved (and probably a good portion of the men too) had fallen in love with him. True, he didn't save them repeatedly – well, maybe he did, she'd think cynically. Maybe they all felt the same "special" connection she imagined existed between herself and Superman. Everyone thought he'd come just to save them. That was what he did. That was what he was.

But after Paris, she knew. Call it reporter's instinct or feminine intuition, she knew she'd seen more in his eyes. She didn't know what had changed and she didn't care, all she could think about was how to find out what that more was. Could he, could he possibly feel as much for her as she did for him?

Lois had never lost the ability to laugh at herself over this, even now when she was practically panting in anticipation. She, the unsentimental, wholly realistic Lois Lane, believing her soulmate had flown into her life, all muscle and spit curl and snapping red cape. Because life was just that good.

Of course there was the whole he's-another-species issue, and the fact that she never knew when she'd see him, or what his real name was for that matter, so it wasn't like falling in love with him didn't have the proper level of trendy post-modern angst. She just couldn't feel it. The idea that he might actually care for her only sparked exhilaration, joy and a deep, driving impatience.

And that impatience was crawling all over her as she sat up late in the honeymoon suite's bed, TV on CNN, laptop open as she cruised source blogs and the AP and IP sites. Then the TV commentator's voice made her look up.

"Breaking news – a hostage situation in Metropolis has just been resolved by Superman. Armed men now identified as part of Intergang were holding twenty-five prisoners while surrounded by Metropolis police. I believe we have some footage, taken moments ago…"

She watched, hungry for the sight of him, angry that she was stuck here. "Clark!" she yelled. "It's Intergang – get in here!" They had worked on a piece about the dangerous international criminal organization less than a month ago.

"And here," the anchorman was saying, "is Marcia Denby on the scene as Superman delivers the criminals to the high security prison –"

"Clark!" she called again. Irritated, she slid off the bed and padded to the doorway. The room beyond was empty. The couch was made up, the sheets were even rumpled. A book, Homer's _Odyssey_, lay on the table alongside a half a glass of water, his cell phone and his glasses. His shoes were lined up neatly on the floor beside the table. The bathroom door was open a quarter of the way and the room behind it was dark.

"Clark?" Lois entered the living room, glancing toward the little kitchen but he wasn't there either. Crossing to the doors onto the balcony, she pushed the curtains back to look outside. Where the hell had he –

She turned and jumped, for Clark stood right behind her. "Jesus!" she gasped. He jumped too and then nervously pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Sorry," he said, ducking his head.

"Where were you?" she demanded.

"In the, um, the, uh…" he gestured uncertainly toward the bathroom.

Lois looked at him strangely. In the bathroom, with his glasses on the table, then standing an inch behind her wearing them. Her eyes narrowed.

"Intergang just pulled a stunt in Metropolis," she said. As she walked over to turn on the TV across from the couch, she let the tickle of a thought play at the back of her mind. Beside Superman and Intergang, Clark might be only a minor mystery, but that didn't mean she wouldn't get to the bottom of it eventually.


	9. Chapter 9

He didn't know what to do, or what was right. For him not to know that was like walking blindfolded into a tornado. He'd always been sure, completely certain that he understood and embraced his destiny. Now it held him in chains even he couldn't break.

It was becoming torture to be so close to her and not be able to touch her.

He walked beside Lois, feeling the light mist of the falls, hearing it fall on her face, the sound so clear and so close that it felt like he was caressing her skin with his fingertips. Every instant of his existence reminded him of the gulf that yawned between them. He could never offer her even the simplest gifts of human love – a home, a family, the dedication of life to life. For his life was not his own. In the last twenty-four hours of their "honeymoon", he'd had to leave three times. As much as he wanted to block out the world, he couldn't. He heard them. He heard all of them.

He heard the anguished scream of a mother, nearby, immediate, terrified. He looked – a half-mile down the curving walkway, a boy who'd tumbled over the rail, plummeting down the wall of water. People surged forward in a helpless wave to watch in horror, Lois moving with them. He let them move past, stepping back. In the blink of an eye, he was gone. An instant later a streak of red and blue shot down from the sky

Back on the boardwalk, Lois gasped, realizing what she was seeing an instant before everyone else around her. People cried out in astonished cheers as Superman ascended, the child safe in his arms. She drank in the sight of him, then blinked, that little tickle jumping from the back to the front of her mind. She turned, scanning the crowd quickly. It wasn't like Clark was hard to pick out, he was so… tall… but he was nowhere to be seen.

As Superman the boy on the grass and the sobbing mother ran to them, he heard Lois' voice, far down the boardwalk, saying softly.

"Clark?"

In a flash he was away from the scene and coming out of a small tourist shop booth, fumbling to unwrap a disposable camera. He caught Lois' eye and waved awkwardly.

She watched him closely as they walked on, trying to work out this strange thought. Clark's eyes were blue, but not the unearthly blue of _his_ eyes. But the glasses, they might be enough to cut that color. No, she thought. Superman was at least two inches taller. Of course if Clark ever stood up straight…

They continued until they'd left the falls and were walking along the rushing Niagra River. But why? Why would Superman, with powers far beyond those of mortal men, masquerade as – Clark? No one would want to be Clark, which, granted, made it a perfect disguise. But, but – my god, had he been standing right beside her all this time and she never knew?

It took every bit of self-control she had ever possessed not to turn and demand the truth. But she knew she'd sound like a madwoman if she was wrong. Lois leaned on the rail and watched him from the corner of her eye. Then she looked down at his hand resting on the rail beside her. The river, gushing fast over the rocks, was a roar in her ears. Clark stared at the water. For the first time since she'd known him, she considered Clark Kent. Slowly, Lois realize that if she were asked to sum him up in one word, it would be "lonely".

Carefully she laid her hand on his. He started, turning to look at her.

"L…Lois," his voice quavered. "Wh… what are you, uh – " his mouth continued to move but no sound came out. He looked like nothing so much as a fish out of water, gasping in the alien air.

It shook her certainty. That – and his skin felt normal, even slightly cooler than her own. Definitely not the banked furnace heat of Superman's touch. You've lost it, sister, part of her mind said. You want him to be beside you so much you're seeing him in Clark – Clark! But her fingertips moved over the back of his hand as she looked into his eyes, seeking just one moment of familiarity. But there was nothing.

Stubbornly, Lois reached up with her free hand, her fingers catching one corner of his glasses. The moment she tried to pull them off, his hand covered hers.

"No."

Lois trembled.

* * *

The touch of her hand had stopped his heart for an instant, and now it beat double-time to make up for it. Automatically, he covered with Clark's awkwardness, fighting to keep he truth from his eyes. _But why? Isn't this what you truly want?_

No. he felt the danger in it, to her, to the world. Both of his fathers spoke, overlapping, resonating together so deeply, it shook him.

_You_ you _are_ are _not_ here _one_ for _of_ a _them _reason.

When she touched his glasses, he begged forgiveness, pleading – you didn't know I would meet her. When you told me to lie – you didn't know!

But when she started to draw the frames away from his face, he stopped her. The truth could be a terrible thing. It could tear her away from him, steal from him the one thing he treasured most – her nearness.

It was too late. Something in the way he spoke wiped the doubt from her eyes. Her gaze grew strong, urgent.

Lois breathed in deeply. Then, her eyes searching his, she said, "You can stop me. If you want to."

The glasses slipped a centimeter, two. She had just glimpsed the true color of his eyes when he stiffened, his chin lifting a fraction of an inch. Looking at her, feeling her so close, hearing the distant cries for help – it tore him in two. For a split second he could not move. He could not breathe. Then he released her hands and was gone in a blue flash.

Lois stood alone by the rail, still holding Clark's glasses in her raised hand.


	10. Chapter 10

It had been hours, hours back in the honeymoon suite, watching the news to try to find out what had drawn him off, hours wondering if he would even come back here. Lois sat with her laptop open, trying to concentrate on something else, anything else. But her eyes kept moving restlessly from the screen to the doors open onto the balcony, to his glasses sitting on the coffee table.

When the room's door opened, it startled her to see him dressed in his usual buttoned up, long-sleeved shirt and neatly pressed gray pants. She stood quickly as he stopped just inside the door.

Lois gestured at the new pair of glasses on his face, "Those don't work as well." She could see the blue of his eyes through them.

"I know," He reached and drew them off, his eyes never leaving her. Lois felt her breath quicken. Superman stood before her. Superman – and she knew more about him, and less, than she'd ever realized.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice low and concerned.

"Yes," she said, then, "no. I don't – " her words cut off abruptly. She gazed at him; three feet separated them but she could feel him, feel his every breath. "I'm in love with you."

Warm and sweet as honey fresh from the comb, her words filled him, from the toes on up until a small laugh broke out of him. Joy was spinning his head – of course, Lois wouldn't beat around the bush. Of course, she'd cut right to it.

She came closer, stopping just before him, turning her face up to him. Her beautiful face; he'd seen it in a hundred different moods, from fierce to tender. "Would you," her voice quivered and that tremor speared him to the core, "tell me your name?"

His own words surprised him, "Clark Kent."

She frowned and shook her head in frustration but froze when he took her hand. "There's more. There's a lot you need to know, Lois."

"I want to," she said.

The distance between them had been collapsing by degrees, now only an inch separated their bodies.

He nodded, a small movement. He saw her hands come up, felt them lay gently on his chest.

"Kiss me, Clark," she whispered.

He touched her face, slipping his fingertips along her cheek as his head bent. At last, at last, he felt her trembling lips under his, her warm breath rushing into him, her arms around his neck, her heart beating against him. Nothing mattered more than this, more than her…

As their feet left the ground to fly to the Fortress, three other pairs of feet touched Earth's surface. General Zod surveyed his new planet, and found it good.

The last son of Krypton was no longer alone.

* * *

There had been so much he hadn't known about himself before his father died. There were a hundred things he could never share with his mother; she worried so. Jor-el and Lara – weren't really here. He never forgot when he spoke to him, that he talked only with memories. Never before had there been someone to whom he could tell it all.

Lois was awed by the Fortress, cautious in the midst of its powerful strangeness, but nothing outweighed her curiosity. Always she wanted to know more. How had he carried this part of Krypton here? When had the planet died? How old had he been when he came to Earth?

She concentrated to follow his explanation of relativistic travel, how, during the first three years of his life, as he crossed the cosmos, the universe around him had aged thousands of solar years.

"Could they see us?" she asked. "Your parents? Could they see Earth?"

"Yes."

"But it was three thousand years ago?"

"That's right."

She laughed in disbelief, "They must have thought you would seem a god to us."

He nodded, "They did."

"That's – " she paused, shaking her head slowly, but smiling at him, "There are a lot of incredible things about you – but that's the topper." She laughed again, "And you landed in Kansas?"

A slight smile touched his lips, "Yes?"

"Nothing," she straightened her face deliberately, "I'm just being a big city snob when you definitely win the who's-got-the-more-cosmopolitan-origins contest. From what you're saying, Krypton must have been millennia ahead of Earth."

"It was. It was an ancient, magnificent civilization, a million years old." He looked around the crystalline Fortress of Solitude. "Now this is all that is left. I am all that is left."

Such infinite sadness humbled Lois; it frightened her. She had some awareness of his burden as hero, but this weight she had not understood. How utterly alone in the universe he was. She could not stand the despair tingeing the air, so she tossed off, "And you get stuck with this lot of animals just because you look like us. That really is tragic."

He smiled, "No, you're wrong, Lois. You don't even believe that yourself. You couldn't, and be who you are. I've seen your courage, and your compassion. It's why you go after the truth the way you do."

Lois looked away from his intense gaze and his smile grew wider, "You're blushing."

"I am not!"

"Lois, I can feel every change in your body temperature."

"Well, that's cheating and I don't like it, so stop it." She waved a hand before her face as if she could wipe away the pink on her cheeks. "How'd you make your skin cool – by the river? That almost threw me off the scent."

He took her hand in his, "Simple biofeedback," and his fingers cooled while his palm stayed warm.

"That's creepy," she said. "In fact, there's a lot creepy about this. You sneaking around with a secret identity - being Clark Kent."

"I told you, I am Clark – "

"You know what I mean," she interrupted. "You're not really the guy who trips over himself every five seconds. It must be so strange for you to act like that."

He laughed a little, nodding. "But I… I really like it sometimes," he confessed.

"Why?" she was laughing too, warmed by his touch, amazed at this sudden closeness.

"It can be a relief to just be the average nobody, to not be noticed. I can almost feel – normal. Besides," he stepped nearer to her, reaching up to brush her dark hair back over her shoulder, "if I hadn't been that Clark, I would never have met you."

Lois' heart was pounding as she put her arms around his shoulders. She felt the warmth of his body heating her as she caressed his face with her fingers. Going up on her toes, she kissed him. The passion with which he returned it melted her against his steel body.

He pulled back to look at her, and said, "Sometimes, I think I crossed all that space, all that time, just to meet you, Lois."

Lois Lane had never really cared about much in the world, just her career and herself, her own sense of honor. She acted as if she was an extraordinary person, precisely because she knew she was not. She worked so hard to make up for being ordinary. But when he spoke those words, she touched a truth more profound than any she had ever believed in, than any she had ever believed possible. She couldn't help but be surprised to discover that she had a special destiny after all. Every step of her life had led her to this moment – to him.


	11. Chapter 11

Zod picked up the armored infantry transport and tossed it into the air to strike one of the Blackhawk helicopters bearing down upon them. Truck and helicopter exploded in a rain of burning metal, killing everyone in them instantly. Ursa laughed and glanced at the second line of transports approaching. Her heat vision roasted the soldiers inside alive. Non walked through machine gun fire to break men in half with his bare hands.

When silence at last took the battlefield and the humans knelt in surrender, Zod rose into the air, feeling that he had at last received his destiny, denied him by the shortsightedness of the Kryptonian Council, and the vindictiveness of Jor-el. On this planet, he thought as he looked down upon his new subjects, there was no doubt of his power, his righteous superiority.

"I am General Zod," he announced. "Your ruler. Your lands, your possessions, your very lives will gladly be given in tribute to me. In return you will receive my generous protection. In other words, you will be allowed to live."

The world trembled, under the blows of these mad titans, and cried out. But the Fortress of Solitude was impenetrable to sound. Inside it, he heard nothing but Lara's voice and Lois' breath.

"Your father and I tried to anticipate your every question, Kal-el. This is the one we hoped you would not ask."

He stared at his mother's image, the perfect Kryptonian hologram, lifelike, seemingly solid, remote. "I have to," he said.

"And she, the one you have chosen, she feels as much for you?"

"Yes."

"If this is what you wish, if you would hold one above all the others," Lara looked down, struggling to hold back her emotion. She took a deep breath and pinned him with piercing blue eyes so like his own, "If you intend to live your life with a mortal, you must live as a mortal. You must forsake Krypton, and become one of them."

Become… one of them. His heart pounded at the undreamt of possibility opening before him. To live a normal life, with Lois. With Lois…

"This crystal chamber has harnessed the rays of the red sun of Krypton," Lara said. "Once exposed to these rays, all of your great powers on Earth will disappear forever."

There was no time to feel all of this, no room inside him now, for Lois had filled up all the echoing, empty spaces he had endured so long. But it took all of his strength to turn against the drag of Lara's words. _If you would hold one above all the others_. He looked at Lois, watching him from a short distance away. In her eyes he saw hope, fear, confusion, courage – she opened her lips as if to bid him, no, it is too much, but he silenced her with a look of utter and deep certainty. He stepped toward the chamber.

"But consider," Lara's voice stopped his movement, "once it is done there is no return. You will feel like an ordinary man. You can be _hurt_ like an ordinary man. Oh, my son," her voice broke and she reached out to him, across time, to plead a mother's fears. "Are you sure?"

He wished with his whole being that he could touch her, just once.

"Mother," he said softly. Then he straightened and smiled gently, "I love her."

Lara's head bowed, and she faded from his sight, lost to him, forever.

He stepped into the chamber, and warm crystal grew around him, encasing him. In an instant fire consumed his body. The flesh was stripped from him, his bones were ground to powder, as radiation burned through every tissue, every cell, every molecule. The agony went on, and on, while the energies rewrought him from the inside out. The living crystal of the Fortress slowly died around him and he felt it as he felt the strength bleeding from his body, his senses dwindling, collapsing inward, the pressure like a black hole sucking with impossible, bone-breaking power.

When at last it ended and the crystal chamber melted away from him, Lois ran to catch him as he stepped uncertainly and faltered. She pulled him close, and he wrapped his arms around her. She was breathing hard, her cheek wet against his.

"Clark," she whispered. "Clark, are you…"

He kissed her, the joy so sweet and intense he could not tell it from the pain.

* * *

The President of the United States, leader of the Free World which no longer existed, stepped forward and tried to keep fear from shaking his voice. "What I do now, I do only because it will save lives. But there is one man on Earth who will never kneel before you."

Zod looked faintly bored by such a threat, "Who is this imbecile? Where is he?"

The President's shoulders bowed, "I wish I knew." Slowly, he bent his knees. His eyes fell on the eagle decorating the carpet, the Great Seal of his office. "Oh, God," he whispered.

"Zod," the General corrected him.


	12. Chapter 12

In a single night, Zod, Ursa and Non conquered Earth. They circled the globe, death descending from the skies. Moscow, Beijing, Lagos, Sidney, Buenos Aires. Thousands were crushed under falling buildings, burnt to blackened cinder. Armies crumbled before the onslaught, missiles were tossed into space, fighter jets punched to the ground miles below. In a thousand languages, humans cried for mercy, and died.

* * *

Clark kissed Lois slowly. They had come so far to find each other and now, finally he held her, flesh to flesh, and her skin tasted like the scent of a rose, soft, but heady and deep. Her hands explored his chest, his back, trembling as they moved. He rose up on his elbow so he could look at her, his hand lost in her thick hair, moving to caress her cheek. She turned her head to kiss his palm and then gazed up at him with shining eyes.

He had never imagined such happiness.

* * *

At dawn, the three Kryptonians returned to America, alighting at the United Nations building. Attended by terrified human workers, Zod prepared his headquarters in the General Assembly hall, which he considered just barely grand enough to accommodate him. Indulging in what pitifully few luxuries this backward planet had to offer, he was soon refreshed. Calling Ursa to his side, he began to plan ways to make these creatures more productive. In a short time, he was sure, he could build a fleet of starships with this world of slaves. He had felt each eon passing over him, trapped in the Phantom Zone, and each of the interminable moments only increased his thirst for vengeance. Jor-el, he knew, was long dead, so Zod would return to Krypton and obliterate every drop of El family blood that still existed. Soon, soon…

* * *

The Fortress gave him one last gift, teleporting he and Lois to the reaches of its dying power. In Canada they rented a car, heading home, to their new life.

It was a strange new body he possessed. For the first time, his clumsiness was real. He laughed it off, assuring her that he would soon master his diminished senses and strength. As they drove, he told her about the early years, the physical difficulties he had endured as his body adjusted – this wasn't even so bad in comparison. Lois appeared to take it in stride, but only because she was overwhelmed by the enormity of all that had passed.

The towns they traveled through were quiet, even the highway was mostly deserted. Neither of them really noticed.

At dusk, Lois insisted that they stop to eat. Eager as she was to return to Metropolis, she worried about the strain he had been through. It took some searching to find an open restaurant. Lois chalked it up to small towns, rolling up the sidewalks at six o'clock.

But the atmosphere in the place was strange, the people oddly subdued. They took a booth in the corner, sitting side by side, still absorbed in their own cocoon of closeness.

They were brought out of it abruptly when three young men entered. Unlike the rest of the people they'd encountered, these were agitated, loud – and one had a gun. He shot it into the ceiling and shouted.

"Wallets, purses, jewelry! Toss it out if you don't want to die!"

Lois caught Clark's arm as he moved. "You're not bulletproof anymore!" she whispered urgently, holding him back.

He looked at her, shook his head – it doesn't matter, his eyes said. The three men were circling the room, two brandishing knives, fear and rage sweating from their skin.

A man held his wallet out in a trembling hand, but he challenged them any way, "How can you do this now?"

One of the thugs snatched the wallet and backhanded him, splattering blood across the tabletop. "Keep up, Pops," he said, with a cruel, desperate laugh. "The world is ending – it's every man for himself."

The other two criminals encouraged him as he raised a hand for a second blow, their attention distracted. Clark surged up away from Lois' restraining hand, launching himself at the gunman's back, tackling him. They landed hard, the gun flying from the man's hand and skittering across the floor. The other two thugs turned, jumped, dragging Clark up.

Lois watched in horror as the three of them beat him, landing vicious blows from all sides. The rest of the company seemed frozen, heads low, as if they had long since been defeated. A driving fist struck Clark's face, another plowed into his abdomen. Blood poured from his split lip and he retched, his knees buckling as they pounded on him. As he crumpled, she shook off the shock at seeing him fall under the hands of ordinary men. Dropping to her hands and knees, she scrambled across the floor to where the gun had slid under a table.

Pain. He knew pain, knew how to ignore it, force past it, but his muscles would not obey his commands. He was slow, he was weak. Hard-toed boots drove into his back, his chest, his face. Skin split, blood vessels exploded, somewhere above him he heard helpless raging words – and then the ear-shattering crack of a gun shot. He had to get up, someone was going to be hurt, he had to –

The three thugs spun to see Lois, the gun in her hands. "Get out!" her voice trembled but her hands were steady, "or I'll blow your heads off your shoulders!"

They scattered, knocking over tables, leaving the door swinging wildly on its hinges.

Lois threw the gun down and ran to Clark's side. For a second she could only stare – blood smeared his face, she had never seen his blood. His eye was swelling, a knife had slashed his arm deeply. She caught his reaching hand and with an arm around his back, she helped lift him as he struggled to rise. Tears stung her eyes. Because of her…

They reached the bar. She barked at the waitress to get some towels. The woman started and ran to do as she was told. As Lois wiped at the blood with shaking hands, she didn't even realize she was whispering.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm – "

A high pitched alarm sounded from the television above the bar. It had been on the whole time, but with the sound turned low. Like sleepwalkers, everyone turned to see a view of the UN building.

"This is it," the waitress said, her words a deadly monotone. She reached to turn up the volume.

The President of the United States appeared. He was haggard, his voice gruff. "As of today," he announced, "I, and all the governments of Earth, abdicate all power over this planet to General Zod."

As the name of their conqueror was spoken, Kal-el of Krypton knew the terrible symmetry of the universe. He felt it in the sickening fear of the people around him. The people of Earth. His people. His to protect in gratitude for his chance at … life…

Lois' face was close to his, her hand frozen where she was gently cleaning a wound at his temple. Like everyone else she stared at the television, stunned. "What?" she said softly.

The waitress looked at her, defeat in her eyes, "What else can they do?"

On the television, the President cried out, "Superman, can you hear me? Superman, where are y-"

He straightened, and wrapping a towel around his cut arm, he twisted it, the pain spearing him, nauseating waves of it. Weak, he was weak and helpless – Zod threw the President, tossed him aside like a rag doll, calling, as Kal-el moved for the door with Lois following, "Come to me, Superman – if you dare!"

He led her into the alley and tersely told her of Zod. "I've got to go back."

She searched his eyes, "How? There's no way now. You couldn't even make it back – you'd never survive!" Her voice became soft and pleading, edged with desperation for she saw the depth of his resolve. "You're hurt. You don't even know your limits. Clark, please, listen to me – " she caught his face in her hands, "Please, I can't lose you, not now-"

His eyes closed. His body was numb in comparison to the pain slashing his heart. She was right. He would die in this attempt. "Lois," he breathed. For a moment, for one last moment, he let her hold him close.

"I have to go back," he said again.

Her hands clenched on him, "Then I'll go with you," she said.

He shook with the effort it took to push her away. "No."

Tears of fear brimmed in her wide green eyes, spilling over, "Clark," she begged him, "please don't, please –" She broke down and he shuddered as he pulled her close, enfolding her in his arms. Softly, he kissed her, a lingering sweetness.

His voice low, he said, "I love you, Lois." Then he turned away from her and walked into the darkness.


	13. Chapter 13

He couldn't hear her, couldn't hear her heartbeat. That rhythm had been inside him since he'd turned time around. From the moment he had – changed, she had been close enough that he could hear it with human ears. He couldn't hear her anymore, couldn't think of her anymore. What his selfishness had already caused the world to suffer –

_If you would put one above all the others_.

He walked. Cars on the road were few, the people who did pick him up, far between. A plump woman of about thirty shrugged off the danger of letting a large stranger into her car with a pained and frightened smile. "We need each other now," she said. Then she told him that her sister lived in the next town and had just had a baby so she was bringing food and water for them to stockpile. "A lot of the trucks haven't shown up in the last few days. No one up here knows how long the food supplies will last." The next day, it was a wiry older man and his nearly grown son, their car packed with survival gear. They were making for a remote cabin in the woods. Only a few words passed between the men; their eyes were like hunted animals. Then he was alone on an icy road. He walked.

That night, he huddled, exhausted, on the lee side of a cliff of ice. He was afraid to sleep, afraid he'd freeze to death if he did. Cold was outside his experience, the way it stole control over the body, imprisoned the mind in painful sensation. He rested fitfully, visions of his mother haunting him. He could see her, pacing the old floorboards of the farmhouse, grief-stricken. She would be sure he was dead. It was the only way she would be able to believe that he had let such a thing happen.

Cold. Cold shame. Death was not to be his. He had to live, had to reach the Fortress. When the bitter fingers of despair stole over his heart because he knew what a futile goal it was, that even if he got there, nothing remained, he wrenched himself up and put one foot in front of the other, blindly, again and again.

* * *

Zod listened after the President's outburst. He heard the humans talk about Superman. A hundred, a thousand conversations, monotonous in their pathetic pleas that this savior would return and defeat him. But they spoke of flight and power, heat vision and speed – all the gifts accorded to Kryptonians on this planet.

He found the primitive printed paper and tasted bile in his mouth as he read it. Superman was indeed Kryptonian. But Krypton was dead. Zod's dreams of vengeful conquest exploded as his homeworld had, thousands upon thousands of years ago. Had he not been imprisoned in the Phantom Zone, he too would have died then. He would feel at least some small triumph in that, except Krypton's only other survivor stood proudly in the paper's photograph, the El family crest emblazoned on his chest. More than that, the face was his father's as Zod had known him when they were young. Jor-el's face and Lara's eyes.

Zod's rage was indescribable. Jor-el had beaten their world's destruction when it had claimed everything else, so that Krypton lived on – in his son. Gathering Ursa and Non they were in Metropolis in seconds, scanning the Daily Planet building, finding the article's author. He tore open the wall of Perry's office and stepped in.

"You," he commanded. "Where is Superman?" contempt at the name dripped from his tone.

Lois stared at him, her legs and fingers turned to ice. She shook her head slowly, "I don't know."

Zod glanced at Non. In the blink of an eye Perry hung by his throat from Non's raised fist.

"God, no! I don't – " Perry clutched at the hand crushing his windpipe. "He's – he's gone."

A nod from Zod and Non set Perry down. Lois started to move to catch him as he fell, but Ursa suddenly stood in her way.

"The General has not dismissed you."

Lois stood still, but her eyes found Jimmy's as he helped the chief up. "He's gone," she said again. She turned away then. Better to look into Zod's face and see death than to see the hopelessness come into Jimmy's eyes.

"Do you mean he is dead?" Zod asked.

She refused to let him see her desolation, so she lifted her chin as she said, "Yes. I saw him die." _I killed him. He died for me._

Fury, boundless and unquenchable, possessed Zod. Vengeance so close but denied. These insects would suffer, suffer because Krypton could not. They would build his starships and he would go forth to conquer more deserving worlds. This one, he would obliterate in his wake for ever harboring the son of Jor-el.

As the General and his minions disappeared into the sky, Lois sat shakily in the nearest chair, leaning over Perry's desk, supporting herself with her arms. She concentrated on the pain of her fingernails cutting slits into her palms so she wouldn't sob. But she couldn't stop the tears from running freely down her face. She clenched her fists so tightly they trembled and she nearly cried out when Perry touched her back.

She looked up at him, dark bruises on his neck, and she whispered, "I'm sorry." Her head bowed, and she hated herself for the thought pounding at the inside of her brain.

I'm sorry for everything I did that brought this to pass. I'm sorry – because I don't care what happens to the world so long as he comes back to me.

* * *

When he could no longer walk, he crawled. Through ice and snow, mile after unforgiving mile. Frost stole his toes, parts of his fingers. Still he reached for the next hand hold and pulled himself another foot forward.

* * *

It took less than a week for Zod and Ursa to assimilate all the knowledge of Earth, its science, its technology and resources. He would use the former heads of governments, leaving it to them to carry out his orders for raw materials. If any failed him, he would simply kill them and replace them with the next in line until he found someone competent. He looked to the harshest regimes on the planet as models of efficiency for the free world and was somewhat pleased to find resolve in at least a few of Earth's dictators.

Anything or anyone he found bearing Superman's crest he destroyed instantly, always enraged to be reminded of how narrowly he had missed his rightful revenge. The mere sight of the El crest seized his gut with sickening cruelty. He despised this planet now, hated it for being the place Jor-el had chosen for his son. There was a touch of grim delight in it all, for Zod knew what had happened, that Jor-el must have seen the end coming and the Council, complacent and arrogant as always, had ignored him.

I would have listened to you, Jor-el, he thought. Had you taken my offer and backed me in my bid to rule, you fool, Krypton would have survived for I would have forced the population to move. And so your line dies here with your useless child who could not manage to stay alive among these ants long enough to challenge me. But then the terrible frustration would return. He should have fallen before me, crushed beneath my hands. It would have been so… perfect.

He shook his head and turned back to his task. Another week and he would complete his plan for restructuring human society – the more intelligent ones would enact his plans to advance their technology to the proper level, the rest would bend to mining and manufacture. A few he would dedicate to feeding the rest, but only a few. There were so many humans, like bugs, everywhere. To starve off a billion would be helpful for maximizing production. It was only a twenty-five year plan he was formulating. He didn't have to keep them alive for long.

* * *

The Fortress loomed at last, dark and silent above him. He made it to the crumbled remains of the control panel just before his legs gave out. He fell to his knees and looked up to see the magnificent structure was disintegrating, its walls blowing away in a fine crystalline dust.

_Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust._

No hope. All that remained of Krypton was the murderous trio that now raped Earth, for he had forsaken what he was.

_You are not one of them._

Despair beat him down, his weakened body falling, curling in a futile attempt to preserve heat.

Not one of them… could never be one of them, alien, apart, his destiny… Here, just a few feet from here, she had touched him – No! Can never think of her again, no…

His eyes closed in exhaustion and he could not fight anymore. He knew the depths of his cowardice, that he had lied to himself, believing there was some use in coming back here. There was none. He had returned only to die, here in the last vestige of Krypton, here where he wouldn't have to see them looking to the sky for a hero who would never come. The grinding weight of his failure crushed inward on his soul like the bony cold squeezing the breath from his fragile body.

His cheek froze slowly to the ground, his eyelids sealed shut by ice. As blackness clawed at his consciousness, his spirit rebelled feebly, grasping at a last reserve of strength, a final will that would not bend.

No, he had not come here to die. He had to find a way, some way, because… His mind was sinking into dark depths and her felt her touch on his face, a soft, small glow that nonetheless warmed him. There had to be a way, because his love for her could not be the world's doom. He could not allow it. It could not be.

His cracked lips parted and he tried to speak her name as the darkness won out.

In the sky over the Fortress, cosmic forces, cruel and indifferent, painted beauty in the green and gold sheets of the Aurora Borealis. It danced like Fate undecided above the single dying man as the Arctic night deepened. Far below, tiny, a mere pinpoint, a foot from his fallen body, a small green crystal glimmered softly in the frigid, unrelenting night.


	14. Chapter 14

Lois had told Zod that Superman was dead, and she knew it to be true. But she had prayed every minute since he'd walked away from her that Clark might still live.

It had been too long for her to hope any more.

The world she lived in now was ruled by fear and cruelty. She was far from alone in her loss, but there was a special horror just for her. Humanity cursed Superman now, speaking bitterly of the day when Earth and Krypton's destinies became entwined. Every overheard conversation beat at her until she wanted to scream so all could hear, _He died for us! He died for all it is to be human!_ Tears ran down her face as she stood on her balcony. _He only wanted on simple thing for himself – not to be alone._ Anguish issued from the jagged black hole that sat in her chest where her heart had once been.

There had been nothing he wouldn't give for this world. She had never fully grasped it, how he could be so different from them, so much more than they could ever hope to be, and still he gave everything to them. It was not his strength that she missed, or that humanity needed right now, it was his noble heart, which she had touched for one moment.

His life humbled her. He'd lost a world before he'd even known it. His dying father, in a bid to keep him safe, sent him to a world where he was a god among men. He could have done as he pleased, anything he wanted, and he gave, and gave…

She stared up at the stars. Did you understand, Jor-el? She wondered. Did you truly understand the blessings and burdens you placed on him?

But then her eyes closed. To look up at the sky was no longer bearable. How could his parents have known? They never experienced his infinite gentleness or his fierce protection of all that was good. They never knew the depth of his love for his adopted world, or the trust you gave him, simply because he deserved it.

She had run out of tears and now stood silent, faced with the wasteland left inside her. He was dead. The truth of it sat like a block of black ice in her gut. He was lost to her forever. And – he had died alone.

Lois' knees buckled, but she caught herself on the concrete ledge, leaning heavily on it. Everything she had ever believed in was gone. Everything she had ever wanted, everything she had ever loved. But in the darkness closing in on her was one hard, bright, kernel of knowledge. He had not given up while there was a breath left in his body. She knew it, knew he wasn't capable of dying any other way. To the last, he would have been trying to find a way to save Earth.

With a quick gesture, she wiped her face. Then she went into her bedroom and pulled a suitcase from the closet. Efficiently, she packed three days worth of clothes.

Humanity would not go down with a perverted memory of him. No knew more about Kryptonians than she, no one knew their strengths like she did.

But one man knew their weaknesses, and how to exploit them. One man on Earth knew how to find kryptonite, and that made him humanity's last hope.

Lois left Metropolis and set out to find Lex Luthor.

* * *

Tiny fissures crawled along one of the great pillars of the Fortress. It cracked with a mighty noise, and plummeted the long distance to the ground, opening a hole in the structure above. A shaft of white sunlight struck Kal-el's curled body.

He slitted his eyes open, unfocused in the sudden brightness. He became aware that he was lying on frozen ground and he was so terribly weak that he could barely move. In the haze before his eyes, he saw a green glow. Kryptonite, he thought sickly, somehow someone had trapped him. Kryptonite, that was why he felt as if he were… dying…

His eyes closed as it all came crashing back in on him. Dying, should have died, didn't… how…? His eyes opened, fastening on the green crystal. Painfully his hand crawled forward, fumbling at it. It was real, not a mirage, not a fantasy. It pulsed as he closed his fingers weakly on its hard, smooth surface. A memory swam through his muddled mind, handing the crystal to Lois, sitting beside her here. She must have laid it down… he drew it toward him slowly and warmth stole up his fingers, his arm. She must have laid it down, so it hadn't melted with the other memory crystals. This one, the seed. He pressed it to his chest, rolling over onto his back.

The sunbeam made the crystal glitter, and in the bright pool of light, the cold was slowly driven from him. Relief from that constant agony made him able to move, and, staggering up, he carried the crystal out on unsteady feet. He walked far across the arctic field, until he couldn't take another step. He threw the crystal. It traveled thirty feet and fell.

On his knees in the frozen waste, he waited. And then the ice beneath him trembled. Crystal pillars rose, shining so bright in the sun that they burned his eyes. All around him, a new Fortress thrust hundreds of feet into the air. The control panel grew before him and he watched the green crystal emerge from the depths of the structure, rising to its place on the panel. It stopped, the other six memory crystals arranged around it, then it turned slowly and clicked into place.

_My son. You do not remember me._

Kal-el wept. He crawled forward, damaged hands fumbling their way over the panel. He had no idea what a second exposure in the crystal chamber would do to him, but it was the only thing his ravaged mind could conceive. The large panel emerged at last from the floor and he pulled himself up on it. The crystal grew around him.

He screamed. His body convulsed in a paroxysm of the purest agony that ripped along every nerve fiber. Encased in the crystal he could not escape as the breath was wrung from him, as pressure built inside his head. It was never-ending, unspeakable suffering.

The chamber cycled down, melted and he fell, gasping against knives driving into his chest. He tried to rise and could not. He wept now in despair as he lay from an interminable time, what little strength he still possessed ebbing from him.

At last, his frail fingers dug into the ground and he pulled himself forward, toward the pad from which the chamber grew. Pushing at it, the dense Kryptonian crystal heavier than anything of the same size from Earth could ever be. It took him a day and a night to force it across the Fortress floor. As dawn touched the white arctic ground, he lay by the pad, spent, but gathering his strength for one last effort. His body trembled uncontrollably. He knew this would be all he could withstand. But, stubborn, his will made him reach his feet and lurch back to the control panel. He took the green crystal. Stumbling, falling more than once, he made it back. With labored breath, he lay still and waited for the sun to rise high. He had not even the strength to beg, to pray. He thought only of the people who died now for his weakness.

At last, he forced himself to his feet and stepped onto the pad. The green crystal lay between his feet as the chamber grew. His heart pounded wildly with fear of the coming pain.

Yellow solar energy merged with the red rays of Krypton's sun, roasting him, burning him alive. Two stars tore at him, ripped at his flesh. His body broke down, turned inside out, collapsed, stretched, was ground to dust.

The chamber melted. Kal-el swayed. He fell, slowly, landing heavily upon the packed snow. He lay motionless in the icy silence at the top of the world.

* * *

A/N - Interested writers, please visit the Superman forum "SuperWriting" - a place to discuss our obsession and craft!


	15. Chapter 15

In a desert of ice, beside the monumental alien structure, Kal-el lay facedown. Nearly buried in snow, his body was still and lifeless. Sol's golden rays touched the glowing pad, still blood red with the radiation of Rao, Krypton's sun. The light of each bounced off of the crystal, striking streaks across the Fortress walls which reflected the bright, strong blue of the sky.

Small but clear, a tendril of steam rose from his body, wispy and white. Another finger of vapor twisted up from near his face, and then steam rose all around him, outlining his body. Snow turned to slush around him. Ice became water beneath him and slowly he began to sink as water vaporized in the tremendous heat of his body. He shuddered suddenly, uncontrollably. A mile away the face of a glacier crumbled.

He rose to his knees, raised his face to the sun. He breathed in deeply, spread his arms, feeling every inch of his skin, every fiber of muscle surging.

And then he shot into the sky.

Hovering high in the stratosphere, he listened and found Zod. His own emotion he set away ruthlessly as he concentrated, mapping the sounds, identifying the location. Three of them, three – and as he listened to them, they could hear him if they chose to, if they knew to pay attention.

Just before he reentered the Fortress he paused, found Martha's voice, and Jimmy's and Perry's. He listened near them in vain – she was not there.

_If you would put one –_

He descended into the Fortress to plan for battle.

* * *

Lois knew people who had done business with Lex Luthor even from his prison cell. He was after all, an "idea man" as he put it. She walked right into the office of one of Intergang's governors and told him that she wanted Lex to help her form a Resistance against the Kryptonians.

"You don't want to be a slave any more than I do," she said, and the hardened man before her nodded. He sent her back to Metropolis with an address for a block of warehouses along the East Side docks.

She entered one of the deserted buildings and called for Luthor. A minute later, the brick wall of the far side of the room slid away and an elevator opened.

"Do come up, Ms. Lane," his voice echoed through the empty space.

Lois entered the elevator. After a short ride it opened onto a plush suite tucked in between the warehouse's ceiling and the roof. Lex, nattily dressed in a white-jacketed suit, grinned at her.

"At last we meet," he said, leaning over his cane for a moment, his manner buoyant. "It's always seemed strange to me- oh, come in, come in," he gestured her forward and walked beside her as she came to the center of the room. "It's always seemed strange that given our mutual interest in the blue boy, we've never talked. Tell me all about yourself."

She stopped and fixed him with a feral green stare, "This isn't a social call, Luthor. I need kryptonite."

Lex chuckled and said with eager curiosity, "Your own paper wrote that you saw him die. Is that true? Or were you just having a little fun with our Kryptonian conquerors?"

"Luthor, the entire world is at stake!"

"I really must insist, Lois." The smile had vanished from Lex's face. His eyes glinted as he cocked his head slightly, "Answer my question."

Lois blinked back the tears that threatened. But her voice broke as she said, "Yes. It's true. Lex," she came toward him, speaking urgently. "You're a human being, no matter what your morals. They're going to destroy us. All of us. How can you hold back the one thing that can save us?"

"Are you kidding?" Lex asked, incredulous. "Do you have any idea what this information is worth now? Lex baby doesn't give up his secrets for free under any circumstances. Besides, having the one thing that can kill them means I'm the one human they'll have to do business with. It's a hell of a bargaining chip. Pardon me." He picked up the phone on the desk nearby and dialed. "Yes, hello. This is Lex Luthor. I'd like to speak to General Zod."

"Wh…what?" the hushed voice on the other end said. "No one asks to talk to him."

"Well, then he should be free to take my call."

Lois watched, speechless, as he covered the phone with one hand and said to her, "I'll just be a minute."

"H… he could kill me if I take this to him," the terrified man told Lex in a whisper.

"He can hear you right now, so he might kill you if you don't," Lex replied.

There was silence on the other end, then scurrying feet. When Lex heard the timid words, "Ge… General, sir," he started to speak, knowing Zod could hear him.

"General, are you aware that there is a substance on Earth that is lethal to Kryptonians? Please be so kind as to leave the building intact when you visit." He hung up and looked at her, "They should be right over."

He had kryptonite somewhere in this room, she realized. Lois' eyes ran around the furniture and shelves, looking for a lead box. But then the General arrived, Ursa and Non at his sides. Their feet punched through the ceiling in three neat holes. Lex frowned, but recovered quickly.

"Good evening, General. I'm Lex Luthor. I believe you have already met Lo-"

"Do not try the General's patience," Ursa spat.

Lex blinked, then shrugged. "Kryptonite, your … General, sir. It emits a specific radiation that interferes with the way a Kryptonian's body absorbs solar energy on Earth. It saps your powers and, with a long enough exposure, kills your cells. I, being the greatest criminal mind on Earth, am the only person who can identify it. Except you, of course." Lex smiled apologetically, "But, you have to die to find it."

General Zod lifted an eyebrow at the man's insolence.

"And that's not all Lex Luthor can do for you, General. For instance, Ms. Lane visiting me just now means humans are organizing a resistance against you."

"I am already aware of this," Zod was bored, so he nodded at Non, who moved toward Lex. Lois saw Luthor put his hand near his jacket pocket as he stepped back.

"Obviously, obviously," Lex said quickly.

In his pocket…

"But did you know, General," Lex continued, "that Superman, the son of Jor-el, is still alive?"

Lois' calculating thoughts froze in her mind. Her breath came hard. "No," she whispered, spearing pain cutting through her – to hear him say what she knew couldn't be true and feel the flaring, futile hope anyway. She shook her head slowly, "You couldn't know that."

"Lois," Lex said, smiling kindly at her, "You just don't know me well enough." Then he turned, "You see, General, Kryptonian biology is so unique on Earth that there are certain energies you give off when you're busy flying about and knocking down buildings. One of my little inventions," Lex's smile broadened, "can pick you up, anywhere on the planet." He lifted a remote control and a computer screen appeared from behind a painting. A three-d representation of the globe glittered into view. Lex touched a button and bright colored dots emerged, concentrated on the East Coast of the US. "That's your movements over the last few days. But this," the globe rotated onto its side so the Arctic faced them. A single dot shone near the North Pole, "showed up two yesterday. I imagine he'll be coming to you soon." Lex turned and, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, nodded at Lois, "Hold onto that little lady and it will be that much soone-"

The wall of the room ripped open, brick and plaster exploding, disintegrating under an impact like a freight train. In the dispersing dust, Superman floated, his cape whipping scarlet in the wind. He crossed his arms over the bright red and gold of his shield.

He met Zod's engulfing, maddened fury with a steel gaze. "General," his voice boomed, powerful and sure, "would you care to step outside?"

"See what I mean?" Lex said.

Lois was rooted to the spot, the sight of him shooting desperate joy through her so intense she forgot to breathe. For one second their eyes met, and then Zod was upon him.


	16. Chapter 16

Tops were torn off buildings, cars became projectiles, people screamed. Superman took their measure quickly – Non was a mindless machine of destruction; Ursa a dirty, clever fighter. Zod was cold calculation incarnate, a strategist of death. Kal-el tried again and again to draw them away, into space, or at least to open country. But Zod would not give up his advantage. In the city, Superman was handicapped with so many humans at stake. Chaos reigned on the streets below as people emptied buildings, tried to run. But there was nowhere to go as the battle raged across the whole face of Metropolis.

Lois stood in the opening in the wall of Luthor's lair, eyes and ears straining. There were distant crashes, then bodies streaking through the sky, flashes of black and blue. Every second crawled over her skin – her joy at seeing him alive had been swallowed in her fear of this deadly combat.

Lex came to lean a raised arm on the other side of the ripped wall. He plucked the cigar from his mouth and said, "Care to make a wager on the outcome, Ms. Lane? I'll give you the odds since it's three to one." He watched her face and said solicitously, "I'm sorry, Lois, do you need a moment? I imagine this is all a bit of a shock," he chuckled. "I mean, you really thought he was dead."

Lois looked at him, wide-eyed, stunned. He was enjoying her reaction so much he didn't see her hand slip into her purse.

"You really believed it – believed you'd seen him die," he said, that cunning glint returning to his eye. "Something happened. Something with… you…" The ground shook suddenly, violently, and they both reached out to the wall to steady themselves, their eyes remaining locked. Luthor grinned insultingly, "I guess that's why you get such exclusive access."

Lois dropped the dumbfounded expression and gazed at him sharply, remarking, "Really turning yourself over there, aren't you? Tell me, Lex," she drew the gun from her purse in a quick movement, "is that kryptonite in your pocket, or are you just glad to see him?"

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They would not follow him! No matter what he did, Zod kept them in Metropolis, again and again using the helpless humans to force him to come back. Vicious, lightning fast strikes came at him from all sides as Ursa and Non attacked, wreaking havoc on anything in their path, and he struggled to keep people from dying.

Then they lifted a bus full of innocents, their screams clawing at his ears. To get them away from here, he would have to gamble, gamble in lives. His own no longer meant anything to him, except as barrier to this evil destroying Earth, so he could not even give his life for theirs. No, he had to bear their dying breaths.

He leapt in front of the mass of metal as it shot across the asphalt, sparks flying. He was pushed toward a building wall. With a crash that shook the entire fifty-floor structure, he struck and was buried between shattered concrete and twisted metal. He heard Zod laugh in triumph.

When he crawled out, bent, seemingly broken, he took off shakily, flying straight up. Zod saw him and in the blink of an eye, tore the nearest building from its foundations. Rubble flew, blocks of concrete and steel slamming to the ground, ripping holes in the asphalt. Superman did not slow. Zod destroyed another building and another. Still he ascended.

"Son of Jor-el!" Zod's voice boomed through the streets, shaking the air. "They will pay for your cowardice if you do not return!" His voice rose into a thunder that shuddered walls and shattered windows. "Come and kneel before Zod!"

Kal-el rose into space, the vacuum a guilty relief. For a split second he could no longer hear the cries below. His eyes closed tight for a moment. And then he shot back down to the North Pole.

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Lex's smile did not waver, but his eyes went deadly cold, fastening on the gun, as he said in a slow monotone, "Why, Lois, you saucy little minx." He stepped toward her, and she pointed the gun directly at his forehead. He froze.

"I'm not him," she warned. "I…I'll kill you." Just the tiniest tremor in her voice and she cursed herself because he heard it, and took another step toward her. "Hand it over Lex."

Zod's echoing cry interrupted them. For one second, Lois looked toward the sky. Lex seized her wrist. They grappled, Lois trying desperately to point the gun back towards him. She couldn't give up now – if he lost, her mind fought against that thought but she forced it through. If he lost, this would be Earth's only chance. Through gritted teeth as she strained she said, "Give me the kryptonite!"

An instant after the word left her lips, General Zod appeared, and Ursa and Non had the two humans helpless in their hands.

"This substance," Zod said to Lex. "You will give me proof it is as dangerous as you claim."

Lois pulled futilely against Ursa's hand at her throat. "Where's Superman?" she demanded.

Zod barely spared her a glance. "The son of Jor-el has fled."

Hope flared with Lois – he was still alive!

"We will find him in time and exact our final revenge. Luthor, show me."

Lex grinned and reached into his pocket, drawing out a small box. He opened it to reveal a green shard. The Kryptonians sagged, and, just to complete his point, Lex elbowed Non hard in the stomach. The giant fell. Lex snapped the box shut.

"We can negotiate price later, General," Lex said amiably. "I was thinking of … Australia. Right now though, I think you might be looking for," he paused to shoot Lois a cruel look, "Superman's address?"


	17. Chapter 17

Zod took in the condition of the Fortress. "This is how he honors Krypton?" Then he laughed, and the sound made even Lex Luthor's treacherous heart quail. "Oh, Jor-el, I have my revenge a thousand times over! Your son is not only a coward, but a fool."

Ursa laughed with him, her steel fingers still at Lois' throat. "He has forgotten Krypton to be one of these," she shook the human in her clutches.

"Disgusting," the General pronounced.

"I expect," Superman's voice rang out, "better manners from my guests, Zod."

"Manners, son of Jor-el? What know you of manners? You have lived in barbarism and ignorance. To think of a Kryptonian mind trapped in such a backward world, it pains me." Zod, surprisingly, spoke calmly, and with sympathy. "It need no longer be that way. You need not be isolated, alone. I will make you the offer I once made your father. Join me. Swear loyalty to me and I will not kill you. It is foolish to struggle against each other when we are the only Kryptonians alive. If you have even half of your parents' intellect, you will be useful to me. And I can teach you of Krypton. I can show you what you truly are. I will even spare this planet if you wish it, in exchange for your loyalty. You may keep your pets so long as you and they serve me."

For a long moment, Kal-el was silent, regarding the only others of his kind he had ever, and would ever see in the flesh. "That might be a very tempting offer, General," he said at last, "from someone actually capable of ruling. I know more of Krypton than you might imagine."

In the center of the room the surface of a crystal pillar glimmered and resolved into the image of a wise face, framed by white hair. Jor-el's resonant voice filled the air.

"General Zod is the greatest example of this principle. Great selfishness breeds great weakness. Had he not been so subject to his own greedy ambition he would have been a great man. Instead, he was nothing but a small and pitiable tyrant who was easily overcome."

Zod's cry of rage shook the crumbling Fortress. What happened next was too swift for the two humans' eyes to follow. They were whipped by wind as the General, Ursa and Non attacked. But Superman was prepared for them, using his knowledge of the labyrinth of crystal pillars to confuse his opponents who chased him fruitlessly through the gigantic structure. The blur of the Kryptonians' movements stopped abruptly. Superman had Zod's neck in a hammerlock from behind.

Ursa did not hesitate. With a gesture at Non, the two of them had Lois by the arms. "Release the General!" Ursa cried. "Or we'll tear her apart!"

Lois screamed at the pain, but her eyes fixed on Clark's. "No, Superman, don't –" her words cut off in an agonized cry. Through the wall of fire tearing at her muscles, she kept him at the center of the haze clouding her vision. Don't let him go, Clark, she thought desperately. Don't – not for me, please…

But he did. And she was forced to watch as, gloating and triumphant, Zod humiliated him, as Luthor betrayed him, revealing the terrible secret of the crystal chamber. She thought wildly of rebelling in some way. If they would kill her, she wouldn't have to see him go through this again. Silent tears ran down her face. They had conquered him, and Earth was lost. She closed her eyes as the great room was stained bloody red, and knew utter defeat.

The chamber cycled down and melted.

Clark stepped forward unsteadily, and knelt as Zod commanded. "Take my hand," the General said softly, "and swear eternal loyalty to Zod."

Clark reached up. In the split second when his hand touched Zod's, his eyes found Lois'. He crushed Zod's fingers, then lifted him effortlessly and tossed him against the far wall.

"You switched it," Luthor said.

Superman smiled. In the next instant three things happened. Superman had Ursa and Non unconscious and in a heap by Zod, Lex reached into his pocket, and Lois launched her aching body at Lex. Then Superman was behind Luthor, holding his arms just as Lois reached him and dug the small box out from his jacket.

"Kryptonite," she said, and handed it to him.

"I as wondering why Zod hadn't killed him yet," Superman said, and he tossed the box into orbit. A second later he dropped Lex into the snow a few miles from the Fortress. "Start walking, Luthor. And if I hear you take one step back towards the Fortress, I won't come back to pick you up.

Luthor watched him take off, grumbling murkily as he began to trudge south. His brilliant mind sifted swiftly through all he had learned – starshine that could steal his powers, this crystalline palace 'the Fortress', Lois and Superman. So much interesting information and so much frustrating defeat. He had gambled with gods and now the arctic cold was biting at him because Supes found it amusing to toy with his human fragility. Lex pushed the anger down, down, letting it become denser and more potent. Patience, he told himself. All would be his in time.

A minute or two had passed since he'd stepped from the chamber. Lois' eyes traveled from the downed bodies of Zod and his followers up to watch him descend, alighting a few feet from her. She could not pull a coherent thought through the sheer disbelief that it was finally over while he performed some maneuver at the control panel that brought forth a mighty energy. Zod, Ursa and Non were sucked through a tiny, invisible hole in reality, imprisoned once again in the Phantom Zone, helpless and never again a threat to his precious Earth. Then, at last, he turned to face Lois.

Slowly, she moved toward him, "How-?" her voice failed her. She reached out and carefully touched his arm, as if she needed to make sure he was really standing before her, whole and unharmed.

What was there to say to her? How could he explain the changes wrought in him over the last few days?

"It is what I am meant to be," he said quietly, searching her eyes, hoping she would understand so he wouldn't have to say anything more.

She bowed her head, accepting what she had already known to be true. What he was meant to be. And this, between them, this was just bad luck. Bad luck and bad timing, because it was not allowed. Not allowed for him to love her.

The flight back to Metropolis was silent as they held each other, stealing one last moment against the will of – everything. All too quickly their feet were setting down in her balcony garden. For the space of two breaths, neither of them moved.

He stepped back. She did too. To stay another moment, staring at each other, unable to find any words big enough to describe this loss – to stay one more second was torturous, but less so than leaving.

Lois was about to break and she couldn't, not in front of him, not right now. She tucked her hands into her pocket and turned from him. "See you around," she said.

A second later she knew she was alone. She just made it inside before she crumpled, sliding down the glass, balling herself up. She didn't cry. She didn't want him to hear her.

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He went home, to the farm, just long enough to let Ma know he was not hurt. She closed her arms around him tightly, not letting go for long minutes. He thought of Zod's disdain for Earth's people, his cruelty and contempt, while Martha Kent held him.

She asked no questions beyond Zod, and she cried quiet tears of relief to know he was defeated.

"You did it, Clark," she said. "You saved us all."

He shook his dark head and looked at her, her own boy's familiar face twisted with the terrible responsibility he and he alone bore. "So many people died," he said softly.

There had never been anything for her to do to fix this for him, much as she ached to. She reached for his hand, and held it there on the worn wood of the kitchen table, then sat in silence with him, mourning those lost.


	18. Chapter 18

For a week he worked nonstop around the world, clearing rubble, rebuilding. Lois had covered for him at the Planet, telling everyone that Clark had gone home to be with his mother. They all understood. Many people were returning to the city after having run to be with family while monsters took over the world. Many did not return. It seemed that every single human life had been changed by the ordeal. But as Superman put things to rights a spirit of hope rekindled. He was everywhere, raising walls, straightening bent steel, restoring landmarks. He was a strong, unshakeable presence, as unreachable as he was reassuring.

As he worked, Kal-el felt nothing but awe and humility in the face of humanity's resilience.

It was that which brought him back. He fumbled his way through the office, and it brought some sense of normalcy to everyone else, seeing Clark again and remembering what it was like to feel superior to someone.

"Kent!" he started like a child guilty of misbehavior as Perry approached, "About time you got back. Half my staff gone and you dawdling in." His gruff voice was edged with its usual impatience, but he paused to grasp Clark's hand and catch his arm. His warm eyes close on Clark, he said, "Your mother okay? Your town?"

He nodded, "They're okay, Chief. Alice?"

"Shaken," Perry said with a grin, "but not stirred. Get to work!"

Jimmy seemed to have suddenly aged two years in two weeks. There was a whisper of hardness around his eyes that had never been there before. That saddened some part of Clark so deep that he could not allow himself to feel it now.

He reached the door of Lois' office at the edge of the bullpen. He knocked weakly, then pushed it open, stepping inside, saying, "Uh, hi Lois, I, um, w… wanted to, I mean if you were wondering, I, uh, I just got back."

The door clicked shut behind him; Clark Kent fell away.

Lois stared at him for a moment, her eyes dull with the shock of seeing Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter. He could see the chaos of emotions pass over her face and wished he could understand them as precisely as the thousand sounds reaching him in that moment.

"Are you – " he began, but she came in over him.

"I'm fine." For an instant her reign on her feelings slipped and she ran her eyes over him, possessed of memories – him, tender, impassioned, close against her. They slammed headlong into this new sterile and bleached reality. "I wasn't sure you'd come back here," she said softly.

Moving closer, speaking quietly, he asked, "Would you rather I didn't?"

Lois stared at him, disbelieving. "How can you ask me that? How could you even think -" she whispered. But she knew how. There was nothing more they could say to each other. Not now.

Rebuilt, the world went on. Day after day, Superman faced the human eyes that looked on him with accusation, asking, where were you? Where were you while my family died? And, almost worse, the ones who looked on him with gratitude, smiling thanks, calling him hero for vanquishing Earth's conquerors. Yet nothing struck him down like her eyes. He had finally managed to make his Lois afraid.

She feared to speak to him. She feared to look at him. And it was not a singular fear. She was afraid she might give him away, for it was so deeply not her nature to keep a secret. She was afraid she might transgress the fragile boundary between them, ask of him a moment, some tiny acknowledgement. She was afraid of their love even, for they had at last touched it and only the ashes of destruction stood in monument. Her fear spawned his. He was afraid he would go mad watching her disintegrate before his eyes.

A week passed by, two perhaps; Lois had difficulty keeping up with time now. She couldn't sleep. Yet another night, sitting on her couch, absently flicking her lighter, watching the flame spring into existence and disappear, light, then nothing, over and over. Thunder growled outside as rain fell. She didn't know why she looked up, but she did. And he stood on the balcony, drenched, unmoving.

Numbly, she went to slide back the glass door. They had not been alone since the Fortress. "Cl-" her voice died. But she forced herself to try again, "What are you doing? Come in."

He stepped inside and she left to get a towel from the kitchen, handing it to him wordlessly. He only looked at her, the spit curl dripping used rain drops on his nose.

"Clark?" she whispered.

His deep voice was ragged as ripped metal, "I have to leave."

"Le-" her brow furrowed in confusion. "Leave where?"

"The Planet."

For the first time in weeks her emotions lit, anger, terror, anguish, slicing through her and her voice shook, "Why?"

"I didn't – I never thought it through. I thought things could only be as bad as humans could make them. I never thought about what else might be out there." His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, "Zod. Worse." He raised his head, "I have to go see, make sure nothing else will come that would destroy so much."

Lois felt her stomach go cold and realized he hadn't said what she had heard. "You mean leave… Earth?"

He nodded slowly, his blue eyes sunk deep into hers.

She could barely get the words out, "How long?" He had said it took him thousands of years to get to Earth…

"I don't know. Zod wanted to return to Krypton. He developed a new star drive that I can use to get around relativity, but I – don't know. But I have to go, Lois."

Her head was shaking, her body shivering in horror at the thought. She threw herself at him, clutching at his shoulders, wrapping her arms around his neck. His arms closed around her and he bowed his head, turning his face into her hair. They stood, heartbeat to heartbeat. They stood for an unending time and did not let go.

At last she turned her lips to his ear. "Take me flying," she begged.

He lifted her with one arm, took her to the balcony, wrapping the cape around her, taking off over the city. The rain soaked through their hair until he reached the clouds, cutting up through them, above to the clear sky. Lois lifted her eyes to the uncaring stars that were taking him from her, and cried, shivering against him, her hands touching his wet face, fingers trailing through his black hair, desperate pain she would not speak wracking her through to her soul.

He had prepared himself for this and he would bear it. He soared with her above the world, holding her close but no longer pretending. He was not one them and he never would be. He could never have her, and he must go until he could cease to want her. If he stayed – even he had not the strength to resist the bond between them. It was proven that night. When they returned to her apartment, all she had to say was, "Stay," and he was unable to go. He kissed her trembling lips as her hands peeled the wet tunic up his body. Already knowing what he was going to deny himself, he made love to her one last time, with infinite tenderness.

When she fell asleep in his arms, he laid her down gently, dressed and sat beside her on the bed. He took a small crystal from his belt and set it on her forehead. Touching it with one finger, he entered her mind and carefully disconnected her memories of why he had disappeared during Zod's conquest. He removed her knowledge of his secret identity, and of this night. But, finally, he could not take away everything. He could not bear it for her to know nothing of their love, so he left the night in the Fortress, though it floated, isolated, from the horror Earth had been through. The rest was stored in the memory crystal, just like the engrams of Jor-El and Lara that had guided him for so long.

He caressed her cheek lightly. "It was never your fault, Lois. Only mine." She might hate him, but at least she wouldn't hate herself now. At least she could go on, strong and fearless again. Perhaps she could build a real life if he would just go.

And so he did.


	19. Chapter 19

Half-asleep, Lois rolled over, one hand reaching blindly across the bed. Finding only emptiness, she woke abruptly, confused for a long moment before realizing she must have been in the grip of a powerful dream that had fled. It must have been disturbing, which would be no surprise given the horror the world had just endured, because as she got ready for work she was plagued by a deep and haunting sense of – wrongness. She tried to shake it off, reminding herself that the world had survived, was on the road to recovery. Everything was all right again. It went through her head like a mantra. We're okay now. We're okay, we're –

But it was a lie. She felt it when Perry called her into his office as soon as she walked in.

"What's up, Chief?"" He had his back to her as he stared out the window. Lois' wall of assurance trembled more deeply as she sensed his tension. "Perry? What's wrong?"

"Superman came to see me this morning."

Her heart beat faster as it always did at the mention of his name. "He did?" she asked with practiced calm. "How is he?" Her brow furrowed then as she experienced a slight vertigo. How had he borne the struggle with Zod? Was he recovered from whatever had kept him away? And, fleetingly, it occurred to her how strange it was that she hadn't wondered these things before.

Perry turned to face her. "He's concerned about other extraterrestrial threats."

Lois nodded slowly, a horrible sense of foreboding clawing at her stomach.

"So he's leaving Earth for a while."

Lois blinked, the vertigo rising fast to tug at her knees, but she refused to let them buckle. "F-for how long?" the words stumbled, but kept their feet too.

Perry shook his head and gave a helpless shrug. He went on as gently as his gruff nature allowed. "He wanted me to tell you," he cleared his throat, "he wanted to say thank you, for your quick thinking with General Zod. He said telling Zod he was dead gave him time to plan an attack against the three of them. If it weren't for that, they might have come for him too soon, and he might have lost."

Right, she had lied to Zod – had she? Somehow it had seemed true. Maybe she had believed it, had had to believe it to make herself go to Luthor. She repressed a shudder, remembering the terror, the hopelessness of believing he was gone. And now – he really was.

Why hadn't he told her good-bye?

From nowhere, like a freight train, the memory struck her – in a room of light, him above her, warming her, their bodies naked, his passion, tender and complete, a union so intense, so … perfect.

Perry was talking again, but she could barely hear him, "…wanted us to explain to everyone, tell them."

"Okay," she said weakly, blinking back tears, turning, needing to escape.

"Lois!" Perry's rough voice caught her. "Think! I told him we couldn't. It'd be a free for all. Every criminal around would –"

"Of course. Of course," she said swiftly. She had to get out!

"We'll have to wait, until it's obvious to everyone that he's not around, and then we'll have to play it mysterious, so they'll think he could come back at any minute."

"All right, Perry!" she snapped. "I need – I need a –" she moved blindly to exit.

Perry came around his desk and caught her arm just before she opened the door. "Lois," he said softly, "it was killing him. He told me because he couldn't stand to say it to you."

She looked up at him, the tears getting ahead of her, spilling down her cheeks. She dashed them away with an angry gesture. "You don't know –"

"I'm a man. It's stupid, but it's how we are sometimes."

She pulled out of his grip and said fiercely, "Fine. It's how you are. It's how he is. Damn it, Perry! I just need a minute!" She practically ran for her office, slamming the door behind her, hating that the chief had seen her cry.

And then the memory came again and she crumpled into a chair, trying so hard to hold onto the images that they slipped continually from her grasp. For snatches of instants she would feel his lips on her throat, his body under her hands. She had called him by another name – why couldn't she remember it? Her heart shattered and the thick, sharp shards sliced her insides.

God damn the whole universe! she raged.

Then she threw up.

* * *

For a week she alternated between fury – mostly at herself for being so selfish as to want him here, even when she couldn't have him – and fear that he might meet some terrible thing out there, something too strong for even him to beat. Then both dissolved into an all-encompassing despondency that surrounded her day after colorless day. How long would she continue with this impossible desire? She'd had more than she'd dared hope for in that one night. Even that shouldn't have happened. She knew it. He knew it. She should be glad he was all right enough to be so vigilant as to protect Earth this way. 

She had to get over this. She was making herself sick. And she was getting stupid. Perry's nephew had visited to look into work at the Planet after several years as a roving international reporter. They'd gone out on two dates and she'd slept with him in a desperate attempt to just forget. It hadn't even come close to working. Now she had him pursuing her like a lovesick puppy. Not really. Richard was confident and assured in everything he did – but it was a balm on her bruised ego to imagine that he was mad for her. He did like her, even though, in the weeks after their encounter when he'd fly in from Chicago where he was living for the time being, she was sharp and prickly with him. He mostly just grinned and asked her out again.

Perry gave him a job one week to the day before she found out she was pregnant.


	20. Chapter 20

Clark arrived at work that day just in time to see Lois flee from Perry's office. She was angry, so angry and confused – and he told himself it was just what he wanted. Nothing could be worse than the ghost of herself she had been before he'd taken her memories. At least now she had regained some of her fierceness and he knew, hoped, I would come back in full before long. He told himself it was better, but the guilt was a heavy burden. He withdrew as far from her as he could stand.

It was four weeks before he actually left Earth and Superman did not appear once in that time, though Kal-el continued to save lives, silently and invisibly, using his great speed. When not at the Planet he remained in the Fortress, trying to wean himself from Earth as gently as was possible. Inside its impenetrable walls he could not hear the cries for help, instead listening to the delicate songs of Kryptonian crystal growing into a ship in the Fortress' depths.

He no longer knew who he was. His doomed foray into humanity had shaken the core of everything he had ever known. He had born Kal-el, raised Clark Kent, had become Superman, but no conception of himself seemed to fit any more. Not if he couldn't find a way to live near Lois, or without her, and neither seemed likely. And there was worse, after all that had happened.

He did not trust himself as Earth's protector any longer.

If it was a most exquisite torture to stay at the Planet those weeks, being just Clark to Lois, inconsequential to her, it was no more than he deserved. When Richard White came in on Monday morning during his second visit, Clark watched him put his hand on Lois' back and whisper to her something about "last night". Even as she shrugged Richard's hand off, even as he knew she was rebounding hard, Clark felt the sick jealousy and heard the thought go through his head, clear as a dog's bark on a frosty Kansas morning.

All I have to do is blink, and that hand will be ash, never able to touch her again.

He turned away, horrified at himself, knowing then it was truly time to go.

Jimmy was terribly sad, Perry understanding. Lois barely noticed it was Clark's last day at work.

* * *

He began with no clear intention but to investigate the nearby solar systems, to circle out from Earth and sweep the galaxy for threats. But it was Zod's information he had used to build the ship. Zod, who had located Krypton, wanting vengeance, conquest, finding only fury to know it was gone. The idea grew to haunt him. What was left of Krypton? He remembered his own confused words to Lois that last night and knew it had been in his mind all along – to lay eyes on the remnants of his home world. And it was not to protect against threats. His father had made it clear that Zod was the worst Krypton had to offer. Yet, that was long ago, and if anyone else had survived, somehow…

Were there any Kryptonians who did not play with the fates of worlds and make deadly mistakes? They had destroyed themselves, after all. Was he truly a fool, deceived by the power of Sol and the accident of his molecular structure into thinking he was not fundamentally flawed like the rest of his race?

He had years to consider the question. In the profound isolation of the vast and empty stretches of space between the galaxies, he searched for peace. He searched for home. And when he found only a pulverized ring circling Rao, an icy ring of deadly kryptonite that reached for his center to suck the life from him, he wept to know there was no place for him in all the infinite universe.


	21. Chapter 21

The first several months of the pregnancy were hard. Lois was often ill, suffering inexplicable hot flashes, violent nausea and a general bad temper. She was miserable and frightened, because, somehow, she wanted this child. It seemed bizarre to her, given it was the product of a rebound, that it wasn't part of her plan, that it would happen now, of all times, when she was anchorless and aching with Superman's absence. She was pregnant with another man's child, a man she really barely knew. There was real shame in that for her, even when she tried to tell herself it was only bad luck that the precautions hadn't worked.

Richard was responsibility incarnate when she told him. They'd only been out on two dates since their night together, and neither had ended in the bedroom. She told him she didn't expect him to be obligated. He said he liked her so much that he hoped they could continue to see each other and – come what may, he would always be there to help raise their child.

Normality and Richard went hand in hand. He was steady, warm, a stand up guy. He felt entirely exotic to Lois. Little by little she accepted him, and if she still sometimes found herself on the roof of the Daily Planet, staring into the sky and crying silently while she ran her hands over her pregnant belly, well, everyone's life had static. That was how Lois thought of the hole in her core, that hollowed out trench with its sharp edges and bottomless yearning.

When Jason arrived, she threw herself into motherhood with all the ferociousness she usually reserved for journalism, for he was born early with underdeveloped lungs and a susceptibility to temperature spikes that terrified her with their life-threatening heights. She went through much of this alone, for still she held Richard at arm's length, though they were seeing each other exclusively by default. He never pushed much for more time than she wanted to give and the measured pace of his affection, while alien to her heart, so used to earth-shattering passion, began to feel as comfortable as a well-worn shoe. She realized after some time that it was comfortable for Richard too. He admired her, wanted her, appreciated her, was utterly loyal to her, but he had little drive to understand her.

When Jason was two, they moved in together. It pleased Richard for them to be a family. He was a good father, steady and reliable. He was a good lover, caring and supportive. She worked every day to be the same for him. It was not the life she had longer for, but it was worth while, and would have to be enough. And when she woke from dreams where it was another man who held her in his arms at night, another man who laid his large hand over hers on Jason's chest and called him son, she hated herself. But she always closed her eyes, wishing the dream would come back for just a minute more. And she never, never stopped searching the sky.

She would never know it, but she was looking up in the sky the very night a meteorite struck the ground a thousand miles away in southern Kansas.

* * *

Martha Kent stared out the window as the fireball descended, her heart pounding with fierce joy. She hurried out to the truck, driving straight out into the field over the growing wheat. The ship was enormous, a dozen times the size of the tiny lifeboat that had first carried him to her and Jonathon. She slid out of the truck, searching the steaming mass of blackened crystal, but could not approach too closely for the tremendous heat still issuing from it. Where was he? Was he -?

A hand caught at her shoulder and she turned, holding onto him as he sank to the ground. She cradled him in her lap, rocking him gently, murmuring to him just as she had when he was a child. He was exhausted, and she feared he was ill. Carefully, she urged him up for it was far beyond her strength to lift his dense body.

"Clark – Clark, listen to my voice. Come on, son, just a step further." Into the truck, out of the truck, with him stumbling, shaking with cold, then heat. Tears ran down Martha's face in silent tracks as she got him up the stairs, helping him into the bed. She sank to sit on the bed, worn out, as he fell instantly asleep. With trembling hands, she touched his cheek, his hair, his impenetrable chest while saying a grateful prayer.

"Clark," she whispered, "you've come home at last."


	22. Chapter 22

He woke just before sunrise, opening his eyes to the glowing stars dotting the ceiling above his bed. He had forgotten that charm which had calmed so many boyhood fears when he felt strange and alone. But the one glowing red among a field of cheap fluorescent green only reminded him once again of his lost world. Silently he moved down the hall to peer into Martha's bedroom, stepping in to look down at her. He touched her fragile hand where it lay on the bed, thinking of how it had washed him and fed him and caught him back when he misstepped.

"Why did you love me like that," he breathed, too low to disturb her rest, "when it was such a trial for you?" A thousand hardships he couldn't conceive, to raise an alien as your own son, followed him down the stairs and out into the delicate dawn.

Blessed Sol's rays kissed his face as he stood at the fence he had hung on as a child, that he had repaired with his own hands. Shelby sniffed at his feet while the sun rose and a thousand familiarities enclosed him: the smells of the farm – fertilizer, wheat, gasoline, dog, and the faint, leftover scent of pot roast from Ma's kitchen. Yet nothing could penetrate the sense of utter isolation that had seeped so deeply into his soul.

Each and every thing he encountered when he returned to the house, from the worn sofa to the chronicle of hate and violence flickering across the tv screen, to his mother's voice – all were at once known and unknown.

Ma looked at him, years of worry draping her shoulders, and said, "If your father was alive, he'd never have let you go." And he was struck dumb by the idea of Jonathon Kent. Steadfast, uncomplicated Pa who stood side by side with godlike, unfathomable Jor-el in his mind. What sort of son had he become finally, to both of them? Where were his fathers now, when he had lost his way between man and hero, and did not know if he could ever be either again? They had never had to face his choice. They had both had a lifetime with the women they loved. Both had had homes where they fit, where they belonged without question.

Still they were his guideposts, and bitterness was not a part of his nature, even after so much loss. Resolve had come in the space between the stars even if peace had eluded him. He could find a way to live with the forbidden love he had been unable to excise from his heart. He could not live with failing humanity again. And his extraordinary life had at last brought him full circle. From Krypton to Kansas, from farm to Fortress, from Pa's grave to Jor-el's frozen wisdom.

_They can be a great people Kal-el, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way._

The light to show them the way…

The words rang anew within him, and he knew he could not take the easy path he had been considering. He could not hide from his own selfish desires, and so he had to embark on the last leg of his return. Metropolis. The Daily Planet.

He had to face Lois.

Jimmy's enthusiasm touched him upon his arrival. No longer a boy, Jimmy still seemed perpetually youthful. Perry growled at him from between a cell phone held at each ear, as always feigning indifference behind warm gray eyes. Like the farm, the newsroom was familiar and remote, another place from his past, another place where he had finally fit – once, long ago.

Five years, not such a huge time really, but it felt that way. As he knew he would have to, he fought down the anticipation, the brutal straining hunger just to hear her voice, look into her flaring green eyes. As Clark he would get only a cursory greeting, a chance to absorb the initial shock and prepare for the more difficult moment (deeply his guilty conscience twinged for the tampering he had enacted on her mind) when she would see Superman again.

The universe threw him a bone then, as, on the tv monitor nearby, her image appeared and he was able to look without reservation on the face he had longed for. He noted every difference, the slightly longer hair, the few lines that had begun to appear around her eyes. But her voice, that voice that had always driven like a spike right through the Man of Steel – it was exactly the same. She was giving the NASA spokeswoman a hard time, and he couldn't help but smile, breathing carefully, grateful he was going to be able to take this all step-wise.

Despite all his noble intentions, his heart pounded as he stepped over to find her desk. Even in this computer age, she still kept her phone lists in three-ring binders just as she always had. She still had two half-drunk cups of coffee scattered on her desk. He closed his eyes for a moment, ecstatic and terrified that she might be the one thing that had not changed, that was still just as he had always known her.

And then he saw the photo that turned gravity into a treacherous force, nearly sucking him through the floor. Lois smiled out at him, her arm around a child, and Richard White's arm around them both.

He stared, frozen, until Jimmy spoke from around his shoulder, laughing, "Yeah, intrepid reporter Lois Lane is a mommy."

The normal life he could never give her, that he could never have, right there in a 5X7 frame.

Jimmy steered him out the door and down to a corner bar as he tried to cover his shock. For once Clark's stammering was no affectation.

He swigged on a beer and wished desperately that alcohol had the numbing effect on him that it had on humans. Sternly he chided himself, counting off the emotions he should be having – happiness that she had finally found the life she deserved, relief that all avenues to his hopeless desire had been cut off, pride that he could now devote himself unreservedly to his rightful place. But none of it could make it through the gray haze of bottomless, gut gnawing grief.

Then the baseball game on the television flipped to a breaking news announcement of impending disaster aboard the maiden launch of the space shuttle. For one moment there was no conflict. Lives were in danger, Lois among them, and he had a job to do.

* * *

When the boosters fired and the condescending NASA spokeswoman slammed facefirst into the aisle, Lois was not above an instant of low, evil satisfaction even as she tore her seatbelt off and dove to help the woman up. A veteran of many disasters, Lois didn't shake easily, so while her heart pounded under a fierce adrenaline surge, her mind calculated the number of safety systems NASA had to have in place on this launch.

But then the second set of boosters shot them to the edge of Earth's gravity and she smelled the smoke of the burning tail. Something had gone terribly wrong during the power outage, something that had defeated any safety protocols. People around her screamed and sobbed. She sucked in a deep breath, thought of Jason, and began examining the cabin for handholds that would let her make her way to the cockpit. She'd never been one to wait for death to find her so, even though she knew nothing about flying an experimental plane strapped to a space shuttle, she'd be damned if she'd just sit here while the thing went down.

She was just about to heave herself up when, outside the window, a streak of blue caught the corner of her eye. She shut her eyes tight then, realizing her mind was telling her she was about to die. Why else would she resurrect the long evaporated hope of a miraculous rescuer in a long red cape? Her insides bottomed out and she chanted her son's name over and over in her mind in the darkness behind her lids.

Until she heard footsteps on the roof of the plane.

The next one hundred and fifty seconds were a rollercoaster of threatening doom so wrenching to her senses as the plane spun and plummeted that she had no time to process a single thought. But as the structure around her groaned, slowed, righted itself slowly and, at last, dropped to the ground without a single life lost, Lois, alone among the passengers, knew just what would happen next.

The door tore off and the sound of a roaring crowd surreally greeted the traumatized ears of the passengers. Her fingers were unfastening the seatbelt before he even stepped inside.

"Is everyone all right?"

It _was_ him, alive, right in front of her, just as she had dreamed a hundred thousand times over the last five years. Slowly she rose and his unearthly blue gaze turned on her.

His voice softening, he asked her directly, "Are you okay?"

Lois' lips parted but no sound emerged. She nodded once – the only answer she could manage.

Suddenly everyone was on their feet, shouting.

"Superman!"

But he just gave that tiny wave and rose into the air. Lois plowed through the others to the doorway, staring after him, barely noticing the stadium full of screaming, cheering people.

"Up, up and away," she whispered, her tone somewhere between shock, fury and joy.


	23. Chapter 23

Sorry for the really, really, really long delay. Grad school will do that to you. Anyway - on with the story...

* * *

Lois went straight to Perry's office, slamming the door behind her. 

Perry glanced up, "You okay?"

"Fine," she said, in a tone that was anything but. "It was an electro-magnetic pulse. The astronauts said such a thing has been generated experimentally, but only on a small scale. No technology currently exists that could have created one so strong as to interrupt their systems miles above the earth."

"Get on it," Perry commanded. She nodded and only now, once she'd reported her findings did she look around for Richard. Through the glass she saw him on the far edge of the bullpen making his way quickly toward the office.

"Did you talk to him?" Perry asked, his gruff voice quiet, and Lois knew the 'him' referred to was not her fiancé.

"No," Lois said tightly, not meeting Perry's eyes.

"You're going to have to."

"I know," she took a deep breath. "Just –"

"Give you a minute? You can have one – but only one."

"Screw you, Chief." But she almost laughed at him for knowing her so well.

Richard burst in and seized her. "Lois, are you all right?"

She returned his embrace, avoiding the concern she saw, quickly masked, in Perry's eyes as he watched her and his nephew. That concern, she knew, had nothing to do with the Story of the Year. Still, Perry alone understood the priorities – story, family, personal emotional pain. In that order. Always.

"I'm fine, Richard. Barely even a bruise."

"Thank God," he whispered into her ear.

She let him hold her for a moment more, then pulled back. "What does Jason know?"

"Just that there was an accident and you're safe. Nothing about the size of what happened."

"Good," she said.

"He was here a minute ago." Richard looked at Perry. "Where'd he go?"

Perry looked annoyed as he always did when he was expected to play babysitter, and gestured impatiently toward the bullpen. Lois glanced out to see a messy mop of hair. "He's with Clark," she said. "He's fine. Richard, there was some kind of electromagnetic pulse. NASA is stonewalling and I need to-"

Richard was only half-listening, frowning out at their son. "Who's Clark?" he asked.

"Clark," Lois said briskly, "you know, Cl-" It wasn't until that moment that it clicked in Lois' mind that Clark had been gone for years and only just returned. (_She had a vague memory about Perry saying he'd heard from Clark, back in Kansas – was that last month?_) She hadn't even said hello to him, it being Clark and him being there nearly the same as him not being there. (_And there was a clenching in her gut, unidentifiable, distracting, something…familiar? Whatever it was it made her think inexplicably of standing beside him at the edge of Niagara Falls._)Had he left before she started up with Richard? She couldn't remember if the two men had ever met. (_That had been a good day though she couldn't quite remember why. Perhaps it was just the last quiet peace she'd known before the horrors of Zod and everything that followed._) She shook her head as if to clear it. "Clark Kent. I think you met, but come on. I'll reintroduce you."

Clark had returned to the bar before the cheers had died down, coming out of the bathroom, being sure to look bewildered. He made excuses to Jimmy that the beers had gone to his head and his stomach. Jimmy was so overwhelmed with excitement that he just teased Clark for being a lightweight and dragged him quickly back to the office, raving the whole way about Superman's return.

It was over an hour before she came in, and then she rushed right past him to Perry's office. He had had time to steel himself, and her bitter words behind him as he flew off had helped. So did Richard bursting into Perry's office only a minute behind her. He heard their skin and clothes and twin heartbeats as they came together in an embrace. He forced himself to listen so he could absorb the reality of it – her with someone else, her with a fam-

"Who are you?"

Startled, he looked down at the small voice. A thin and spindly child gazed up at him with frank green eyes.

Clark sat down heavily, and then, unable to stop himself, he grinned at the boy's fearless curiosity.

"I'm Clark. Kent. I'm… an old friend of your mother's – from before you were born."

Jason looked skeptical as he said, "She never mentioned you."

Before he could think of how to answer such a bald statement (_so like Lois_), she was suddenly standing there, pitching a flurry of a checklist at the boy, and he fielded each one with a disconcertingly cool air. Clark recognized that Lois was looking for something that she had under control, a comforting routine, after a near-death experience. She'd always been like that. And that little thought made him ache as she finally looked up at him.

"Clark! You're back!" She leaned in to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but he hung back, then tried to catch up to her to not be rude, the whole thing becoming hideously awkward as he tried to avoid her touch without seeming to, but he didn't think he could stand it. Richard was standing there too, picking up the boy, and they were so obviously a happy family he thought he would choke as Lois shifted swiftly from her polite inquiries into his wanderings to her theories on what had caused the launch to go wrong, and then she said "Superman" and he heard the adrenaline surge speed up Richard's heartbeat. A moment later Lois had formulated a quick plan and was moving away. Richard looked at him.

"And she's off. You know, I love that woman, but she'll always be a mystery to me." There was real worry in his voice, real fear, hidden under casual jocularity. He shrugged and turned, leaving Clark to wonder if that fear was new, or if it had always been there. _Or are you grasping at straws, Kal-el, because even this last precious thing has changed?_

Jason looked over Richard's shoulder and grinned at him, giving a cheerful wave that turned into a circling movement as he twirled a lock of his father's hair with one finger. Clark stared at the small hand, seeing in the gesture the floating, endless circling debris that had once been Krypton. Humanity's future, every single child. But for Kal-el of Krypton there were only endings. Alone, the Last Son watched the boy until he disappeared behind the door of his father's office.


	24. Chapter 24

Lex Luthor held a piece of crystal in his hand, contemplating its clarity, its perfection, its complexity. Through it he could see the newspaper on the desk, and the picture of a man in a heroic stance with a headline screaming HE'S BACK! He. They did not even name him. But then no one knew his name, did they?

"Kal-el," Lex whispered.

Of course he'd return now. It was only appropriate. Lex thought of Zod and how much the General had wanted to kill him. But it was Jor-el Zod wanted to revenge himself upon. _No, General, the father did you dirty. _

_The son is mine._

Five years ago, Luthor had been imprisoned by the Man of Steel. Four and a half years ago he had escaped. Four years ago he rebuilt his alpha wave receiver and confirmed what many suspected – Superman had left Earth. Quietly, methodically, and with a great deal of thievery, Luthor arranged a trip to the North Pole. He went alone, for no one else could be allowed the special knowledge of Superman's home. He wasn't sure it would still be there, but it was. This told him clearly that the superhero would one day return. He worked feverishly then, but it still took another year to discover a way into the Kryptonian palace.

Inside was technology the world had never seen, riches beyond the dreams of avarice, revenge in subjugating humanity with its protector's own tools. The more he learned of it, the more his hatred grew. A God upon Earth, this was perverse enough – that one man could harbor such power in his own body. But he had also the knowledge to change the course of history. Did he use it? No, he hoarded it in his Fortress and locked humanity out.

There were levels of physics the human race had never imagined. There were the secrets of cosmology, stellar science, atmospheric generation, nanotechnology so finely crafted it couldn't even be called a machine. There were secrets of biology and genetics, and even hints of how an alien could share so much of human physiognomy but be so very different in structure. Lex began to suspect that the Kryptonians had once spread their genes across the galaxies, left them to blossom under alien suns. Simultaneously awed and disgusted, he was forced to wonder if humanity was the spawn of some experiment.

_Did they watch us? Did they think of us as their children? Did they send others before him? Had Zeus and Athena and Apollo been born under Rao's rays? How much of our history had they manipulated?_

He could not bear it. Not for him, to be a rat in a lab for dead experimenters. He would take human destiny into his own hands. He spent the next years immersed in the secrets of the crystals. It would take lifetimes to understand them all and for a year he was terrified he would only scratch the surface before he died. Then he penetrated further and realized that perhaps he would have that time after all, for there were secrets of longevity to be had within the knowledge of the twenty-eight "known galaxies."

He spoke to the ghost of Jor-el, who could not tell the difference between him and his absent son. His mind expanded, swelled, struggled to comprehend the possibilities. The knowledge was seductive, Jor-el an amazingly talented teacher. For once in his lonely life, Lex felt he had met an equal, someone who could challenge his magnificent mind. An idea never before fathomed grew in his mind.

It was only fitting that Superman would come back at this moment. Now, when Lex at last had the means to truly destroy him. Then Lex would take his place, and continue Krypton's legacy in a more appropriate way. He would become the True Last Son of Krypton.

And he would rule the world.


	25. Chapter 25

Lois spent the rest of the afternoon feverishly pursuing NASA scientists, none of whom would talk to her, even tried and true sources. She used her frustration to block out thoughts of the monkey wrench that had been thrown into her life. But it was impossible. There was only one story on all the news monitors. People were celebrating in the streets, and periodically throughout the day there'd be another rescue in Gotham, or San Francisco, or London, or Bombay. Each time the anchor's voice became excited and announced, "Superman just (insert amazing heroic act here)", she looked up with unwilling hunger, then guiltily turned back to her computer.

Wrestling through her conflicting emotions was beginning to exhaust her. There was a deep gut-wrenching anger, though whether it was at herself, at him, or at the universe in general she wasn't sure, twisted up with relief that he was still alive, yearning and sadness for what could never be. Her life had moved on and that was that. She was happy with her life. She had grown up. She had a kid for god's sake! She could not be mooning over an impossibility, someone who'd left without even having the guts to say goodbye to her face after they'd…

She wished she could regret their one night, put it behind her. She wished she could understand it, how it had happened. She wished she could actually be sure it had happened because there were times when she thought it might have been merely a dream that she had made vivid and real out of sheer stubbornness.

Perry's command followed her, _"You're going to have to talk to him"_ (as if she'd be able to stand it if anyone else got that interview first) as she dodged people and made her way across the bullpen to Clark's desk. He was neat as he'd always been and she rifled the papers on his desk looking for his notes to see if he'd had any better luck with NASA, where they just kept saying they couldn't talk to her because she'd been on the flight. He appeared behind her a moment later – it didn't occur to her to wonder where he'd been for she hadn't noticed when he'd left.

"Sorry," she said, embarrassed at her presumptuousness, caught with a sheaf of his notes in her hand. But he just smiled nervously and told her where she could find what little he'd come up with. It was like not a day had passed since he'd been in the newsroom, as if they'd finished working on their twentieth story together just yesterday.

She worked late, digging for answers on the blackout, worked until it was just she and Clark in the newsroom, like so many nights before. He was still a good sounding board, politely listening to her every rant about the pigheadedness of government bureaucrats, and quietly suggesting that she might consider patience and diplomacy to get what she wanted. When he finally said he would get them both something to eat if she liked, she looked at her watch and realized it was nearly seven o'clock.

"I've got to get home. Jason and Richard will be waiting for me." She hurriedly gathered her things, trying to refuse to acknowledge that she was reluctant to go home tonight. Because shortly Jason would go to bed and it would be her and Richard and he would still be frightened from her close call. He would want to hold her and she should want that too, she did want that too.

She hated being this confused.

Clark walked her out, his quiet, steady presence actually a familiar comfort, but one so subtle it barely registered on her whirling thoughts until just before she got in the cab, and he raised a timid question.

"Are you all right, Lois? Af-after everything today?"

His worry touched her, for she could see how heartfelt it was. Lois smiled at him kindly, "I'm okay, Clark. Thank you." She paused, then added, "It's good to have you back, you know."

He blinked at her and his surprise was just so utterly Clark that she had to laugh. In the middle of all the complications, laughing with an old friend was a simple release she truly hadn't expected, and it felt wonderful. Reaching out, she gave his arm an affectionate squeeze and slipped into the cab. She glanced back to see him walking off down the street and marveled at how much she really must have changed in these years. She hadn't realized until just now how much she'd missed Clark Kent.

* * *

Lois read from the book about Hercules and his twelve labors as Jason lay beside her. When she finished the chapter about the Hydra, she closed the book and set it on the night stand. Jason turned his bright eyes on her and asked, "Are you and Superman friends?"

She hid her wince, but she'd known he'd picked up on her and Richard's guarded conversations this evening.

"We were. Before he left," she said.

"It must be cool to fly like that," he said, stretching his arms up and zooming his hands around.

"Yeah, I'm sure it is," she agreed, pushing back the memories of soaring in his arms

"What do you think he's doing right now?" Jason wanted to know.

"Probably saving someone's life."

"Like we saw on tv?" he asked, his voice eager and excited.

"Yes, honey. Just like that." Why hadn't she anticipated this? What child wouldn't be fascinated by him?

"How did you meet him?"

Lois' mouth opened but it took her a minute to find words. Jason was still too young to understand the risks she took. She didn't like lying to him, but she didn't think it would be too healthy for him to fear for his mother's life.

"I was in a helicopter that had trouble taking off one time. Superman kept us from being in danger."

"Wow," he breathed. Lois laughed. No one could say 'wow' like a four-year-old could.

She tickled him, "Yeah, wow. Big wow!" He giggled and pushed at her hands. She leaned over and kissed him. "Go to sleep, squirt." She slid off the bed and was at the door when he spoke again.

"I know you were on that plane today, Mommy."

Lois froze, with her hand at the light switch, and looked at her son. He was watching her, and she had to tell him the truth, "Yes. I was."

He looked down at his hand that was toying with the edge of the sheet. "Were you scared?" he asked in a small voice.

"A little," she said carefully.

"What would have happened if Superman hadn't come?"

She went back to the bed and sat beside him, laying a gentle hand on his chest. "But he did come, so we don't have to worry about that."

Jason looked up at her, "Are you sure?"

Lois gave him a comforting, and completely genuine, smile as she said, "Trust me, honey, we've never been safer than we are now."

Her conviction calmed him, "Okay."

"Go to sleep now." He nodded. She stayed until his eyes closed, then quietly left the room to find Richard just outside the door. How long had he been standing there, listening to her and Jason talk?

"Is he all right?" Richard asked.

She nodded and slipped past him. He followed her down the hall to their room. When he closed the door, he said, "Jason's too observant for his own good."

Lois shrugged, "Both his parents are reporters and he's growing up in a newsroom. What else can we expect?"

Richard laughed as he came up behind her, circling her waist with his arms. "It was a close call today," he said into her hair. "Good thing your ex showed up."

She didn't let herself stiffen the way she wanted to at that little jab. "All part of the job, right?" She hugged his arms for a moment, then pulled away, going to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

Richard joined her a few minutes later, dressed in his pajama pants. They brushed their teeth side by side and Lois concentrated on the normalcy of it, on the pattern and routine of her life. She didn't even know if _he_ slept, or did anything as utterly mundane as brush his teeth. She was earth-bound. He wasn't. Two different worlds that could never come together. She looked at Jason's father and wondered at her own insanity.

But when they lay in the dark together, she felt sick with guilt because she rebuffed his tender advances with excuses he couldn't argue with – she had had a brush with death after all. She thought after several minutes that he'd fallen asleep and she was covered for at least a little longer. She couldn't – she couldn't feel or know anything yet. She needed to talk to him to be sure. That wasn't unreasonable. _It doesn't make me a horrible person._

"Are you sure you're all right, Lois?"

"I am," she said, forcing her voice to stay calm. "Just having trouble unwinding."

He was quiet for a minute, then said with a small laugh, "You know if I was the jealous type, I might be worried."

Lois closed her eyes. Richard could be really passive-aggressive, and it never failed to irritate her, but she tried to shrug it off tonight. "It didn't faze me when we ran into Amelie in Belgium," she said, reminding him of a stunning, and overly-friendly, ex of his they had met a year before.

He chuckled again, "Amelie can't fly."

"I don't know, she seemed pretty high most times we saw her." He laughed again and hugged her, but she felt the falseness of it. She sighed, "What do you want to know, Richard?"

"What? Nothing. I was just – "

"Making a joke," she finished for him. "You always do this. Please, don't lie to me when something matters to you. What do you want to know?"

He was quiet again, then said, "It's not fair for me to ask."

"No, it's not. But it's understandable."

"Okay." He pushed himself up on an elbow to look at her. "Were you in love with him?"

"Richard, he's Superman. Everyone was in love with him."

"Seems like everyone still is," Richard said softly.

She said nothing.

"Are you?"

"No," she said firmly. _No. I don't know how I feel, so no is not a lie._ But she tasted the bitterness of such a weak rationalization.

"Okay," he gave a small untrue laugh and laid back down. "Okay. I'm sorry. It's just – it's like the ultimate guy's nightmare, having an ex like that show up."

"Stop calling him that. He's not my ex."

"Come on, Lois," he sounded impatient. "I know – everyone knew you two were involved."

"It wasn't like that, Richard."

"What was it like then?" he asked sharply.

"It was like a very long time ago," she countered, anger finally entering her tone.

"Don't avoid my question. I have a right to know!"

"Richard, am I the first person you've ever been in love with?" she asked.

He answered grudgingly, "No."

"Do you really want to go on with this? What are you trying to accomplish?"

There was a long pause in the dark. "Nothing. Forget it."

She blinked her eyes against the sudden burn of tears. This had always been a problem between them. She was too direct and he wasn't direct enough, and it had never properly meshed, forcing them to work around it over and over again. And then, just as she knew he would, even though he was angry, he put his arms around her and held her until he fell asleep. She listened to his breathing, telling herself over and over again, _he is the father of your child, a good father, a good man_. But her eyes strayed to the window, to the sky, and stayed there until she at last fell into an exhausted sleep.

* * *

Thanks for all the reviews, especially those of you who've stuck with this through long delays. There's hope I may actually finish this. Let me know what you think! 


	26. Chapter 26

He was sweeping Metropolis for crime, for people in need of help. He didn't know he was close to their home. He didn't mean to hear it, but it was her voice and it penetrated even against his will.

"_He's Superman. Everyone was in love with him."_

"_Seems like everyone still is… Are you?"_

"_No."_

And he shut out the perception ruthlessly, but it echoed in his mind as he ascended, up, up and away, away from his desire for humanity. He called up Jor-el's voice.

_Even though you have been raised as a human being, you are not one of them._

_It is forbidden for you to interfere in human history_.

_It is forbidden…_

So many mistakes, but he could bring back the best of himself. He remembered floating above the earth, a cry for help that had taught him the reason Pa had spoken of. He listened, listened to all of them. He was not one of them, would never be one of them. But his life was theirs, for now, forever.

* * *

"Lane, Kent! Get in here!"

Clark jumped where he stood beside Lois and she grinned. She knew he knew better than to think there was anything real about Perry's bark, but something about the loudness of it always seemed to startle him. How he managed to be such a good reporter when aggression always took him aback was one of the great mysteries of life.

They trooped in and Perry was at them before they could even sit, "Where are we with the blackout?"

"It's totally bizarre, Chief," Lois said. "Every scientist we talk to says what happened is completely impossible with today's technology."

"Details, Lois!" he growled irritably. Lois looked at Clark, who shifted nervously, but began to run off a litany of research.

"Um, well, Mr. White, it seems that Star Labs has been working on an experimental EMP generator, because, uh, it's known that other countries are developing one and the, um, US government w- wants a model to work with in order to build defenses."

"Defenses?" Perry exclaimed. "What are they saying about the space shuttle practically falling out of the sky?"

Clark swallowed hard and opened his mouth, but Lois cut in, "They're saying that's just what we should expect – provided someone has an EMP generator the size of a football field. Which no one does."

"The, uh, the Rand Institute has a theoretical device on the drawing table that's much more powerful," Clark explained, "but it, um, it depends on atomic computing power, and that's not available, and is prob-" his voice hitched, "probably five to ten years away."

"So, what was it?" Perry roared. "Doesn't anyone have any record of the pulse itself?"

"No one who's talking," Lois replied.

Clark raised a pencil like a schoolboy trying to get his teacher's attention. "Um, M- Mr. White?"

Perry and Lois both looked at him.

"I, well, I recall there was a, I suppose you'd call them, um, renegade? Renegade group of scientists Lois and I used to know, that operated off a personal fortune from a house in the old diamond district."

"Oh my God," Lois breathed. Then she added, her words coming faster and faster, "I forgot about them. We lost touch after you left – you were the one they liked."

"Um, well, I think you scared them that one time, Lois," Clark said with an apologetic, but genuinely amused smile. "B-but, they were interested in, um, aeronautics, and they were a little, uh, cautious-"

"Paranoid," Lois interjected.

"About the government," Clark went on. "So, if they're still operating, chances are they were watching the launch." He pushed his glasses up his nose. "Don't you think?"

"Clark, you're brilliant," she was already up and moving toward the door. Clark hurried to follow her. "Do you still have a number for them in your records? Forget it, we'll just go down to the place."

Perry cut in over her, "I want something by ten o'clock tonight. Lois!" he barked, stopping her abruptly and causing Clark to collide with the half open door in her hand. "Where's my Superman interview?" he demanded

"What do you want me to do, Chief? Throw myself off a building?"

Perry raised expectant eyebrows at her.

"Perry! Think of your grand-nephew!"

"Yeah, I'll come over to play as celebration for when I print the interview everyone wants," he growled. "Get going. Wait!" He looked down at the photographs of Superman that sat on his desk – amazing images snapped on the street by a kid, who sold them to the Star to be published tomorrow. With grim glee, Perry growled, "Send me Olsen."

* * *

Richard was being overly solicitous; his usual strategy when he was angry. Usually by this point she would soften, berating herself inwardly for her damned hard edges. Feeling terrible, she would swallow her instincts and let the problem fade back, never to be really dealt with. Somehow she was finding that difficult this time, even as Richard went to get Jason for her, brought him back and kept him occupied while assisting her and Clark as they tried to pull the threads of the EMP story together into a coherent article. Clark had been pouring over the data he'd finagled from the little band of extremely strange scientists who were still holed up in a decrepit old mansion on the south side of downtown. He was trying to decipher the reams of information to determine what, if any of it, meant anything they could report. One fairly straightforward thing the group had been able to give them was a timing chart that demonstrated how the pulse had radiated out, proving that it had originated in Metropolis. Now she just had to figure out exactly where.

Richard stood up and stretched, looking at his watch. It was nearly 8:00. "Let's order some food."

"Burritos!" Jason hollered, his voice muffled under the wastepaper basket he was wearing on his head.

"No, kiddo," Richard replied. "We'd have to go pick them up."

Jason lifted the trash can to look at him, "So?"

"It's just a lot of trouble when we can have something delivered."

"He's bored, Richard," Lois said, her eyes glued to her computer screen as she sifted through the NASA pressroom official releases. "Why not take him out for a walk?"

Lois looked up as Richard hesitated and she caught him staring at her. She suddenly felt an intense flare of anger. So this wasn't just his usual 'let's bury the hatchet' conciliation like she'd thought. He was hanging around because he didn't want to leave her alone. He was actually watching her to see that she didn't have a chance to get the interview with Superman. The realization ratcheted up the tension between them in an instant, and it made her want to throw something. Preferably heavy. Definitely at his head. But she couldn't, because that wasn't how they did things.

"I think burritos sound great, honey," she said to Jason. "How's that sound to you, Clark?"

"Whatever you all want is fine," Clark said with his usual eager-to-go-along nervous grin.

"Sure, sure," Richard backtracked at once. "Come on, can-head," he gathered Jason up. "Be back in a bit." He threw one last glance at Lois and ushered the boy out the bullpen door.

The second they were gone, Lois slammed a notebook down on her desk with far too much force, startling Clark and making him jump. "S-something wrong, Lois?"

"I'm going out for some air," she announced, picking up her handheld digital recorder and shoving it into her pocket.

"Oh," she heard Clark say, as he watched her march past him to the elevator. "Okay."

The elevator was halfway to the roof when she realized her desire to vent her righteous anger by getting the interview _right now_ would not exactly guarantee Superman's arrival. Another two floors up fear set in – should he show, what would she say to him? She'd been so bent on her mixed emotions up to now that she hadn't thought the specifics through. By the time she emerged onto the rooftop, her heart was pounding so hard she felt dizzy. Since he'd returned, the Man of Steel had been everywhere, seeming not to stop for a moment. Every hour that went by had another report, another miraculous rescue. He seemed driven in a way he never had been before. And she was going to, what? Snap her fingers, and expect him to zip right over to tend to her hurt feelings? She stared out over Metropolis, its bright lights stretching far into the distance, the street sounds floating up from far below, and knew herself to be small, insignificant, foolish.

She sighed, and opened her mouth for what she felt sure would be a futile attempt. She had an assignment so she had to try. But the name she had given him died on her lips. It wasn't his real name and that fact, the distance between them that it represented, made it so she couldn't bear to speak it. She bowed her head, clenching her fists, and a wave of hopelessness washed over her.

Then she heard, low, right behind her, "Lois."

She closed her eyes, took a deep, slow breath, and turned to him.

"Hi," she said.

The corners of his mouth curved, just barely. Lois forgot what words were to feel him so close again. They stood in silence on the windswept rooftop and simply looked at each other.

"I owe – everyone – answers," he said at last.

She nodded automatically and pulled the recorder from her pocket. Fumbling to find the record button, she swore softly under her breath, and he smiled at her.

Lois grinned ruefully, but his smile had already faded. She felt an alien frission as she looked at him – something, some indefinable warmth was gone from him. "Are you – " she stopped, not sure what she was about to ask. "Are you back for good?"

"Yes."

"Perry told me – when you left," she lost her fragile control and heard the tremble in her own voice, "that you were looking for extraterrestrial threats. Did you encounter something? Is that why you were gone so long?" She bit off her words before all the fears of the last five years came pouring out.

"No," he said. "I found nothing."

"Then where –"

"I went to Krypton, Lois."

She struggled to understand, "But you told me it was destroyed ages ago."

"It was. But after –" she saw the muscles play along his jaw, "after Zod, I had to see if anything else had survived. I had to see it for myself."

She searched his eyes, his newly remote visage, "Why? What were you hoping to find?"

"Answers. About who I am."

What was the terrible weight she felt on him? Why, when he was at last standing right before her, did it feel like he was farther away than he had been these past five years? "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"No," he said. "That place was a graveyard. Dust circling a dead star."

She felt as if iron bands were sunk under her skin, slowly compressing her chest, her heart, her belly. Her muscles ached with the desire to enfold him in her arms, and for once, it was not a selfish desire, not a lover's desire – she wanted to hold him, being to being, so he would know he was not alone.

"So you came back," she was forcing the words out, horrified that the idea that had risen at his words might be true for him, "because you had nowhere else to go?"

He took a step toward her and said, "No, Lois. I came back to the only home I have ever known. Earth has sheltered me, cradled the last vestiges of Krypton for me, given me life and strength. I could never forsake Earth. But I needed the time. I made terrible mistakes with Zod. I had to be sure I understood how not to make them again. For Earth's sake."

She had never, no one had ever fully grasped what had happened then. Why he was absent while the Kryptonian criminals ravaged the world. Would he finally tell her? _Do I really want to know? _For she could feel the pain in him, deep and black."What mistakes?"

He was still for a long moment. Then he reached out and closed his hand over hers where it held the recorder. He clicked it off and she felt cold strike the back of her hand as he withdrew his warm touch. Her heart was pounding at the way he was looking at her. "I wanted what I can't have."

_I wanted_… hot, stinging joy filled her, …_what I can't have_, and flared to a searing pain. But what – what did that have to do with Zod?

"I'm glad you've found happiness, Lois. You are," his voice caught a little, "you are happy?"

She tried to nod, "Yes." But the guilt of her lying words was surging through her. So she spoke the part of it that was unreserved truth, "Jason is everything to me. And R- Richard is… he's…"

"He is a lucky man," Kal-el said quietly. "To have you. To be able to have a family with you."

Lois stared at him, the full weight of his words nearly buckling her knees. Astonished, she realized something about him she had never before imagined. What did Superman dream of? Home, family – things he couldn't have.

He was trying to smile at her, to assure her it was all right that she had everything he had ever hungered for.

"Do you have any other questions?"

She made a choked sound that might have been a laugh, at him still honoring the formalities of an interview. He couldn't go now, not yet, not this way, with isolation like an icy cloak around him. She nodded at his question and whispered, "How fast do you fly?"

Invoking that memory finally moved him. His eyes close upon her, he swayed slightly as if caught in a sudden strong wind. The moment stretched between them, a thousand unspoken truths piling up in the space that would forever keep them separate. Then he held out a hand to her.

She placed her trembling fingers on his palm, slipping off her shoes. As she stepped onto his booted feet, he put one hand lightly on her waist. Lois was aware of nothing, nothing in the world, except for his beloved face gazing down at her as they rose up past the Planet's globe, high into the sky above Metropolis. The stars framed him against the inky black night, making her even more aware of his unearthly origins.

He slowed their ascent, stopped, hovering a mile or more above the ground and he gazed across the distances below them. "Listen," he said softly. "What do you hear?"

She shook her head, "Nothing."

"I hear everything. All of them."

Her voice full of tears, she said, "I know. I spent years being jealous of the whole world."

He looked at her and gently touched her face. Behind the tender gesture she saw a deep pain flicker over his brow, "I shouldn't have –" he hesitated and when he spoke again, his voice dropped low, "I should never – have left without telling you goodbye." The regret sounded harsh, too harsh for what was truly such a little thing. "I'll take you back now. They'll be waiting for you."

The deliberate reminder of her family kept her from doing as she wished and clinging to him, begging him to wait, just a moment more. They soared past the city lights, back to the roof of the Planet. He set her down with infinite gentleness. For a moment, she couldn't raise her eyes, and when she did, she was drawn upward like a magnet. He closed his eyes, bent his head to meet her as if he had no choice but to obey this irresistible force between them – but she couldn't do it. Her lips stopped a millimeter from his. It was not in her to be this cruel to him, to take what she wished and then leave him alone while she went back to the warmth of her child and his father. She had been so afraid of betraying Richard with this love, but she realized, there, with his breath brushing her mouth, that it was him she needed to protect from it.

She drew back and opened her eyes. With terrible finality, she knew she was right when it took him a moment to open his as well. As she looked into their depths, the resolve sank deeply into her gut. It had to be over. She couldn't keep doing this to him. The understanding passed between them without words. They backed away from each other slowly.

As he rose into the sky, his eyes still upon her, Lois drew up all her strength and said, like an old friend – and nothing, nothing more, "See you around."


	27. Chapter 27

Clark barely looked up from his papers and his burrito when Lois came into the conference room where they were eating. But he heard, against the background of myriad noises in his awareness, in the heartbeats and blood pressures of Richard and Lois, a tense little drama playing out.

"Where were you?" Richard asked her.

"On the roof," Lois replied without apology. But then she crossed to him, placed one arm around his back and her other hand on his chest, and whispered to him, "You worry too much, Richard. You really do." And she kissed him softly.

To Kal-el the sound was that of the firm and final closing of a door. There would be no reason for Clark Kent to exist anymore. When they'd finished this story, he would tell Perry that returning to journalism hadn't been the right decision after all. But it was good to have one last mystery to solve with her, closure for his life that had been before. A good bye of sorts.

Sirens and skidding, speeding tires reached his ears. He excused himself abruptly with a hand on his stomach.

After he'd left the room, Richard said, "Can't that guy digest anything?"

"He's got a ton of allergies," Lois remarked, typing speedily on the laptop, "but basically he's just a farm boy. If it's not meat and potatoes it doesn't agree with him."

"Burritos are too exotic for him, is that what you're telling me?" Richard sounded greatly amused.

"Pretty much. He's always been that way. Listen to this –" and she began to read a section of the article's draft out loud, while Superman streaked across the sky to snatch a police car from collision with a building as it spun out of control during a high speed chase. A moment later he had stopped the criminals' car and set it down beside the cops. He was back at the Planet in no more than three minutes.

In another hour they had hammered out an article full of provocative questions, but short on conclusions. Lois determined that she'd just have to call every power substation in the city. The timing differences would be fractions of seconds, but it was all they had. Clark stacked the reams of data sheets neatly in his attaché, even though Lois said he should give it up, that it was probably nothing but nonsense, considering how off their science friends had become. He demurred fussily, but he was sure there was something in the readings. He just couldn't make heads or tails of it yet.

At last they stood to leave, and he watched Lois lift Jason from where he'd fallen asleep sitting up in an office chair. The little boy curled his arms and legs around her without really waking and she kissed his temple.

It reminded him of a night on a Kansas back road with Pete and Lana. _Yes. This is what I'm meant to protect. Not have. Protect. It will be enough._

But he looked through the walls as they entered the parking garage and settled the child into the back seat, speaking in soft tones so as not to wake him, gently healing the tension between them with normal tasks. He watched until they pulled away onto the street, and then he shed his human clothes to patrol the skies.

* * *

At three o'clock the next day, Lois stood and stretched. "Well, I think I've got the grid that went down first," she told Clark. "But it's a huge area."

Perry stuck his head out of his office door and shouted across the newsroom, "Lois!"

"Yeah, Chief?"

"I love you!" he roared.

Clark was looking at her with a bemused and curious expression on his face. "The Superman interview," she explained. "What have you got?" She waited as he gestured nervously at the sheets, then held up his hands helplessly. "Give it up, Clark. You've been at those numbers for a day and a half."

"S-sometimes they almost make sense."

"It's probably just some wacky readings on the local cell phone traffic," Lois said, stopping Jimmy as he passed by with a bag of potato chips in his hand. She reached for the bag and he held it out to her.

"No," Clark shook his head. "I think it's the pulse. It doesn't look like anything, uh, normal technology could have created."

"You know what you oughta do," Jimmy said to Lois as he dug out more chips. "Look up some of your shadier contacts and ask if any of them have heard from Lex Luthor lately."

"Luthor?" Clark asked. The authority in his voice made both Lois and Jimmy do a double take. Clark slouched and pushed his glasses up his nose in his habitual nervous gesture. "I, uh, thought he was in, um, p-prison."

"You really were out of touch," Jimmy said. "Lex escaped four, four and a half years ago."

"And no one's heard of him since," Lois said. "Why would you think of Luthor, Jimmy?"

"Come on – strange technology causing a near disaster right when Superman gets back? That doesn't sound like Luthor? You read the psych profiles the Star bought off the prison psychiatrist. He'd gone around the bend obsessed with Supes."

Lois scoffed, crossing her arms, "You believe what they push at that scandal rag?"

"You're just mad that they scooped you on it when he escaped." Jimmy laughed, then jumped up and scurried away with a quick "See ya," under Lois' vicious scowl.

"I've got to pick up Jason," she said shortly and stomped off.

Clark nodded vaguely and turned back to the data sheets as the knowledge that Luthor was free sunk in. The haunting familiarity of the numbers came into focus again and then dissolved as it had every time. Luthor knew about the Fortress, that was why he'd left it with every form of security he could conceive and that it could provide. But Luthor had had years…

One more time the numbers resolved and he realized with dawning horror that they resembled what might be a monstrously crude application of Kryptonian technology.

In an instant he was speeding north, cursing himself for not having come sooner. But he had dreaded the Fortress since he'd returned. It reminded him far too much of all that he had lost – the memories of his destroyed world and his only love haunted this place, ghosts that he could hear, but never touch again. Within minutes he was descending past the majestic crystalline towers. He alighted near the control panel, which was raised, but dark. Slowly he stepped closer. The seven chambers were empty.

All the knowledge of Krypton, his parents, all that was left to him of his heritage, his very identity – stolen.

His rage rose swiftly to titanic proportions as he shot into the sky. Hovering at the top of the world, he scanned Earth for Luthor's voice.

* * *

Lois pulled out of the day care's parking lot and glanced in the rearview mirror, catching Jason's eye where he sat in the back seat. "I'm going to drop you off at the office with Dad, honey."

"Where are you going?" Jason asked curiously.

"I'm working on a story."

"I know that," he said in that exasperated, I may be little but I'm not stupid way that kids cultivated. "Where are you going?"

"To look around where the pulse came from." In the rearview, Lois noticed that the same car had been behind them since she'd left the school.

"But where is that?"

"A place you've never been before," she said, keeping her eye on the car behind as she took an abrupt right turn. It followed. She reached for her purse to get her cell phone. But her turn had put her on a side street with a retaining wall on one side, and empty storefronts on the other. At the next intersection she saw a second car pull out and stop, blocking the street she was traveling up. The tail car pulled closer. Her fingers closed on her cell. No time.

"Jason," she said calmly, "unfasten your seat belt and get down behind the seat." He started to question her and she said firmly, "Do it now."

Confused, he obeyed. She was forced to slow as they neared the second car. She couldn't do any of the things her instincts were screaming at her to do – like gun the engine and try to make a break for it. Not with Jason in the car. So she slipped off her jacket quickly and passed it to him. "Put this over you. Don't move or make a sound. If I don't get back in the car, count as high as you can, then call Daddy," she dropped the cell phone near him, "lock the doors and wait for him to come get you." She stopped six feet from the crossways car. "Do you understand?" she asked quickly.

"Yes, Mommy." His voice was muffled under her jacket.

"Good boy," she whispered as men got out of the cars. "Don't be scared. Everything's going to be all right." They had guns which they displayed as they moved toward her. "You may hear me say some strange things, but don't worry."

"Okay."

"Be quiet now, honey," tears were clutching at her throat. "Superman," she said in a choked whisper, "I need help."

A gun barrel tapped on the window, and she heard the man say loudly, "Get out."

She opened the car door and stepped out.

"You're coming with us," the man said. All three of them were big, nondescript men. She recognized the type – career criminals for hire.

"Where?" she demanded.

He backhanded her across the face. Lois spun with a sharp cry, smacking the car and rocking it. The man grabbed her. "Let's go, Miss Lane."

He jerked her to her feet and Lois experienced a moment of sheer, heart-rending terror, for just as she thought _at least Jason is safe_, she heard a desperate little voice cry out, "NO! Mommy!" Jason jumped up and threw the car door open.

"Jason, no!" she gasped, but another of the men had seized him.

"Shit," he said. "A kid."

"He's seen us, so bring him."

"No!" Lois struggled madly and the man holding her swung her into a headlock, turning her to face her child.

The man spoke softly into her ear, "Ever seen a kid get pistol whipped?" and he forced her to look at the heavy, ugly gun in the hand of the man who held her son.

She closed her eyes, "All right," she promised, swallowing her panicked tears. They were shoved into the back of one of the cars.

Lois held Jason close, his small fists clinging to her hair. "It's okay, baby," she whispered, as she looked over the interior of the car, the men in the front seat, the route they were taking. She had never known fear like this, with Jason in danger. She rocked him gently as her jaw set. They were not going to hurt her child.

The drove for fifteen minutes, but within five she knew he had not heard her call for help. There was nothing she could do but try to free herself and hope for another opportunity. Her heart sank though as they pulled up to a dock on the waterfront where a massive yacht stood ready for departure. She carried Jason as they were led on board and were ushered into a glass-floored, tastefully appointed state room.

"She had the kid with her, sir," the lead man was saying as soon as he entered the room, Lois close behind. "We had to bring him too." The man stepped out of the way and Lois' heart stopped.

"Lex Luthor," she breathed.

"Lois Lane," he returned. Then he said expansively, "Welcome aboard. I'm sure you've divined that I'm embarking on a little venture, and like any good businessman, I've decided to take out some insurance on the deal. So, here you are. And with such an adorable little tyke. What's his name?"

She clutched Jason and said tightly, "You're a monster."

"Maybe," Les said with a grin. "Better to struggle with gods and monsters than live the boring old life of a nobody, don't you think?"

Lois felt the boat move, and she wanted to scream her frustration and fear. But she made herself think. She had to play along. Lex was obviously expecting Superman, so he would come. And then they'd figure a way out of this. She looked at Lex with calculation as he invited her to take a seat. He was dying to gloat. Good. The more he talked, the more she could learn, and something was sure to be useful.

"What are you plotting, Luthor?"

"Oh, you might call it a little homecoming party," he smiled broadly, delighting in lording this over her. He reached over to the desk and lifted one of the seven clear, faceted shafts. Holding it up to the light, she said, "Tell me, Lois, what do you know about crystals?"

* * *

He searched for the sound of Luthor in vain, se he returned to Metropolis and the Daily Planet, hoping Lois had had some luck pinpointing the pulse's source. She wasn't there, so he took off to scan the city visually, but still there was no sign of Luthor. Back at the Planet a half hour later he found Richard talking to Perry with concern in his voice.

"She picked him up over an hour ago, so they should be here by now. And she's not answering her phone."

Perry grunted, "Is she mad at you?"

"No!" Richard said. "No, we're fine," his voice trailed off, "Well, yeah."

Perry shrugged, "So that's probably all it is."

"It doesn't explain where they are!" Richard insisted.

"They stopped at a store, or they're stuck in traffic. Why are you wound so tight?"

Richard sighed, "Good lord, Perry, why do you think?"

Clark shifted his attention away and went back to listening for Luthor.

* * *

"Of course these are no ordinary crystals," Lex said. "They're from Supey's little arctic getaway." He contemplated her with amusement. "I imagine you're hoping to call out at some point and have him come rushing to the rescue." Lex strutted around her and gestured widely. "Scream your head off. It won't help. You see," he said, in a gleeful conspiratorial tone. "Sound is moving air. No air gets out, no sound gets out. So every wall has a vacuum between it and the outer bulkhead. Even the glass is double-paned. Nifty, huh? But, don't worry, he'll know something's up soon enough."

Luthor pulled up a chair to sit across from her. "Did you know, Lois, the secrets he had hidden in that place? The knowledge he denied our race?"

"Krypton was thousands of years ahead of us," she shot back. "You can't just drop that kind of information on humans. We'd tear ourselves apart with it."

Lex leapt at her, slamming his hand down on the desk beside her, His face a mere foot from hers, he spat, "No! He brought it to our planet – it's as much ours as his!"

Lois held Jason tightly. He had jumped at Lex's sudden movement, but otherwise remained still and silent.

Lex stepped back from her calmly. Lois watched him walk over to the bar and pour a glass of water. He drank slowly and said with relish, "Water. It's an amazing substance. Essential for all life as we know it. It can combine with almost all things. Add a little water and things grow. Add a lot – " he stopped and laughed.

"What," Lois demanded, "are you going to do?"

Lex smiled. "Bring Krypton back to life."


	28. Chapter 28

Lois gazed at Lex in horror, her arms still tight around her little boy. "What?"

"Think of it," Lex said with relish, "that extinct world, reborn here on Earth!"

"Reborn?" Lois asked. "What do you mean?"

"Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters," Lex quoted grandly, "and let it divide the waters from the waters." He came closer, watching her, his voice becoming quieter, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered in one place, and let the dry land appear – and it will be so." His eyes moved from Lois to the line of thick crystals lying on the desk. "Do you know what happens when you add a Kryptonian crystal to water?"

Lex directed her gaze to a screen above the fireplace. A map of the world appeared on it. As she watched, what looked like an island appeared off the east coast of the United States.

"It grows," Lex told her.

The island slowly became larger, pushing the ocean before it. The land mass was strange, jagged and spikey. Water overwhelmed the coast line and surged on for the center of the continent while the new land expanded like a cancer.

Lois shook her head, trying to understand, "Why? What will this get you, Lex?"

"Their technology, their science, their nearly infinite knowledge," he explained calmly. "You can't imagine the things I have learned, nor the things still left to learn. I will advance Earth, as he never would, a thousand years in a decade."

"You're going to kill billions of people!"

"There will be time," Lex said. "I will transform the world slowly, one continent at a time. People will have a choice – cling to their old ways, or join me on New Krypton."

"You're one man," she said. "The entire world will send their armies after you."

Lex shrugged, "Let them. I can construct shields and weapons this world has never seen. I can lay waste to them with a flick of my hand. Now, come on," he smiled kindly at her, "let me hear you say it."

"You're insane."

Lex snorted with laughter, clapping his hands once, sharply, "No, not that! The other thing. Come on, I know it's just dangling off the tip of your tongue." He was taunting her, "Let me hear it once, please, please!" he turned his ear toward her expectantly.

Her face hot, terrified, angry, Lois said fiercely, "Superman will nev-"

"WRONG!" he shouted into her face.

His theatrics were really starting to get on her nerves. As mad as he was, there had to be an opportunity for her to gain an advantage, destroy the crystals, signal Superman before Lex carried out his scheme… but Lex had moved to the mantle and opened a box that sat upon it. He lifted out a large green cylinder. It was dense and translucent, absorbing the light as he held it up and Lois' hope shattered at the sight of it.

"What's that?" Jason asked. She was startled at how normal his curious voice sounded.

Lex smiled playfully at him, "This is the stuff that kills Superman."

Jason frowned and looked at Lois, "What's kill?"

Her voice shaking, Lois answered, "It means to hurt someone very, very badly."

Jason turned back to Lex, "Mommy won't let you hurt Superman. They're friends."

This seemed to delight Lex. "Yes, they are. Very close… friends…" Lex cocked his head, contemplating Jason. After a moment he asked, "How old are you?"

"That's enough!" Lois said, her hands tightening on Jason. But the boy had already held up four fingers.

Lex raised an eyebrow. He came closer with the kryptonite held before him. A terrible dread seized Lois' gut. Jason stared at the green rock in Lex's hand.

Lex looked at her carefully, and despite the terror clawing at her throat, Lois did not let her gaze flinch. "Four years old," he said thoughtfully.

She shook her head, "His father is Richard White. What you're thinking – isn't possible."

"_No_ chance?" Lex asked, insultingly.

"It's impossible," she said, her breath coming hard. "He's not human. Jason is."

An intercom clicked on, but Lex just stared at her keenly as a voice sounded from the speakers, "We've reached the coordinates."

Lex leaned in close to her, "Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir," the man on the comm said, "Forty west, seventy-three north."

Lois stared back at him, holding Jason to her chest. Lex brought the kryptonite close to his face and Lois almost cried out in fear even though she knew her words were true. If Lex decided Jason was Superman's son – she couldn't breathe at the very thought. Jason watched the green cylinder as if mesmerized while Lex passed it over his small body. At last, he straightened, looking somewhat satisfied. He glanced at one of the thugs as he crossed to the door. "Keep them here," he said.

He exited, still carrying the kryptonite in one hand.

* * *

On the deck, Lex watched his henchmen prepare the rocket as he contemplated the sea stretching before him. He heard within his mind, Jor-el's admonition, _It is forbidden for you to interfere in human history._

And he laughed in giddy anticipation as he slipped the crystal inside the kryptonite cylinder.

* * *

Lois had already formulated a plan. She was now hoping desperately that something would delay or prevent Superman from coming, now that she knew Lex had kryptonite. She needed to reach someone else and she was sitting right next to a fax machine. But even the most sophisticated fax made noise when it transmitted. Her heart pounding as she glanced at the enormous man who leered at her from the other side of the pool table, she whispered softly to Jason, "Why don't you go play the piano?"

For a moment, Jason looked at her. He was clearly frightened and she felt her heart squeeze, but she could not waver if they hoped to live through this. "It's okay, honey." But as he slipped off her lap, she had to stop herself from seizing him and keeping him close. And she almost crumbled when, as Jason began to pay the melody line of 'Heart and Soul', the thug approached him. But then, unbelievably, the man sat beside him and came in with perfect timing, playing the bass line.

As quickly as she could, she wrote her note and slipped it into the machine, punching in the office number. Just as the machine took the paper, she knew this was foolhardy, and the music would not cover the noise. The guard would come for her, and she looked around swiftly for weapons, but nearly everything in the room was bolted down to keep it from falling with the rocking waves. The high pitched whine of the fax sounded, the man looked up – and a thrumming vibration shook the floor of the room, making timbers creak, and miraculously covering the sound. Lois let out her breath – it was going to work.

And then the room went dark.


	29. Chapter 29

It took only a moment for Lois to recognize the complete power outage as the effects of the electromagnetic pulse. The music had stopped as Jason started at the darkness, though the thug seemed unconcerned. He must have been there during the test that had caused the first outage so this was no surprise to him. Torn, she sat frozen, wanting to go to Jason and reassure him, and terrified to leave the fax machine where her message was stuck, halfway through scanning. At last power returned, the lights coming up, and power cycling through the fax machine. She turned to it, throwing caution to the wind, punching buttons furiously – but it was too late. The thug was vaulting towards her. She spun up out of her chair, kicking the locks off the wheels and shoving it at him. The huge man just pushed it out of the way, seizing her by the hair and slamming her head into the mantle.

Stunned by the blow, Lois fell hard. She shook her head and tried to scramble away, her thoughts confused. Jason, where was Jason? She could not allow herself to be harmed, because who would protect him, here, alone among killers? Her chest was squeezed tight with panicked breaths, the man was looming over her, raising a heavy geode that he had wrenched off its fastenings. Her blurred gaze at last found her son, standing behind the piano, his breath wheezing through his tiny, asthmatic lungs as he stared in absolute terror at the scene before him.

_No!_ her mind screamed, and she wrenched herself up to discover she was at the foot of the pool table, which meant weapons. She snatched up a pool cue and brandished it, clumsy from the blow to her head, and the man laughed cruelly. The boat rocked unexpectedly, and Lois slammed into the side of the table, nearly losing her balance, but keeping her grip on the cue. She swung it at him with fierce, desperate energy, but he caught it easily in his free hand, wrenching it from her grip and swinging it back at her, landing a vicious blow across her shoulder, making her cry out in pain as she fell to the ground again.

"Night, night, girl reporter," he said and raised the heavy stone.

In the instant that she tried futilely to crawl away, Lois heard a soft _whoosh!_ followed by a discordant _whang!_, and she could not understand what she had seen. The man was spread-eagled and unconscious, sprawled across the floor, knocked flat by the edge of the piano, which was now a shattered mass of wood and strings, crunched against the wall of the state room. She stared at Jason, his arms outstretched, small in the empty space where the piano had been.

_He had thrown it._

Jason started to cry. Stumbling, Lois rushed to him, caught him in her arms.

"I'm sorry, Mommy, I'm sorry!" he sobbed into her neck. 

Lois wrapped him tight in a protective embrace, kissing his hair and whispering fiercely, "It's okay, baby. You did right. You saved me. You saved me." She rocked him back and forth, trying to grasp the truth, finally revealed to her – all of his seeming frailties, all of his strange comments she had blithely dismissed as a child's imagination, her son, her son… and Superman's son. Then her head snapped up, as she heard more of Luthor's henchmen enter. As they stared in confusion at the scene of devastation on the state room floor, she stood and faced them over Jason's shoulder, her stance firm, her gaze so murderous that they hesitated to approach her. One finally drew a gun and forced her to follow them. She obeyed, pushing away any confusion and focusing on one simple thought – she would find a way through this.

* * *

Jimmy saw the partial fax as two other reporters were trying to decipher it. He brought it straight to Richard and Clark at Lois' computer.

"They're coordinates," the two men said together. Richard ran from the room immediately, sending Jimmy in to speak to Perry. No one noticed as Clark walked calmly from the newsroom. In seconds Superman was streaking out across the ocean, certain that Lois had found Luthor, and, as always, was right at the source of the trouble. The pulse had been larger this time and he prepared himself for what he might find if Luthor was trying to use Kryptonian technology. Still, when he heard the continental shelf split, looked down through the waves to see the crack widening, running straight for Metropolis, he was astounded at what havoc one man could create. He checked his headlong flight.

_If you would hold one above all the others,_ Lara's voice echoed in his mind. His eyes closed, and when he opened them again, he spared a single penetrating look toward the ship he could see under gathering storm clouds, miles and miles away in the roiling ocean waves. Then he turned and sped back toward Metropolis and all the lives in danger there.

* * *

Lex was loading the helicopter when two of his henchmen arrived, carrying the third man. He raised an eyebrow at them, annoyed at their continued incompetence.

"Lane knocked him out somehow," they explained as they started to heave him into the back of the craft. "And she –"

Lex held up a hand, checking their movements and their words. "Pitch him over. If he can't handle a woman and a child, he's no good to me."

"Sir?" one of them said, frowning.

"Throw him overboard," Lex repeated.

"But he'll – " the man's words stopped at the look on Lex's face. Together, they carried the man to the boat's rail, hesitated for a moment, and then lifted him over, and let him drop."

As they approached the helicopter, he asked them, "You secured her?"

"Locked her in the pantry, with the kid."

Lex glanced at a handheld computer that was monitoring the growth of his new continent. Within minutes it would tear the boat to bits. He gestured the men into the helicopter and climbed in after them.

* * *

Lois examined their prison, searched every drawer. She attempted to break the lock with every utensil she could find. She climbed up on shelves to pound at the ceiling. She tried to smash the glass of the small porthole shaped window. The minutes crawled over her skin, for she knew that whatever Luthor was doing, it was happening right now, that Superman would be coming soon, and he would fall before the kryptonite – she could not let that happen. Why hadn't the deadly green crystal hurt Jason? Had exposure to it somehow activated his Kryptonian biology? Her hands froze in the act of trying to pry the glass from the window and she turned slowly to look at her boy.

"Jason, could you help me open the door? The way you moved the piano?"

He just stared at her, then looked down at his little hands. His lip started to tremble and she closed her eyes for a moment before going to him, pulling him close. "It's okay, baby. It's okay. You haven't done anything wrong. I know it's scary. But we have to get out of here. That man – that man is going to hurt Superman, hurt everybody. Like you said, I can't let that happen. So try, honey. Just try to open the door. Just push on it as hard as you can."

He nodded and walked slowly to the gleaming metal door. He put his tiny hands on it, planted his feet. Lois held her breath and closed her eyes. 

The door swung out easily on its hinges. She heard it, looked up at Jason's happy cry, "Daddy!" and stared, wide-eyed at Richard in the doorway. He had already lifted Jason and was coming to ward her, catching her in a strong hug, kissing her. 

"How – how did you get here?" she asked.

"I flew," he said.

Lois laughed in relief and at the absurdity of her life, but the sound was cut off at a horrible screech that shuddered the entire boat. All around them wood and metal tore and rent, and an instant later the room spun, tumbling them violently against the wall that had suddenly become the floor. Another teeth-shaking grinding sound tore through the hull and the sky they could see above them fell away. Water gushed into the room, rising rapidly. Lois seized Jason, Richard climbed up the grated floor as they both pressed desperately through crushing waves, slamming debris, trying to lift Jason up, up for the door even as they both knew the ship was sinking, but if they could just get out, maybe they could make it to the plane. Just as Lois began to crawl out the door, a wave caught the heavy metal, slamming it down, striking her head. Richard let go his hold to catch her, ordering Jason onto his back. By the time he'd regained his hold, the door was shut fast, two inches of air remained to them and water thickened above the porthole as they sank down, down. 

Richard clung hard to his precarious hold. Jason's small arm was around his shoulder, the other reaching up to push on the door. Richard could hardly stand the sight of his son's helpless gesture. They were going to die here. Something terrible was happening out there – he'd seen it as he flew in, some horrible, cancerous growth was rising out of the sea – and the three of them were going to die right here beside it, trapped and unknown. He was becoming tired, for Jason's weight seemed to grow as the boy continued to push. Richard could feel his small body trembling, and then his breath was stolen as he saw the metal under Jason's hand crease, and then bend, and then start to buckle.

"Jason, no!" he cried, without thought. "You'll let the water in. You'll – " but he couldn't speak anymore. What he had seen wasn't possible. What it meant… he stared up at the deepening water and tasted true despair. He knew what he did not want to know. His son – was not his son, and it didn't matter what he was because death was mere moments away…

In the darkness closing over them two patches of reddish black struck the window, and slowly, slowly the darkness began to recede until light broke over his damaged little family. An instant later the door was torn off and a hand extended toward him.

Richard White caught Superman's wrist, feeling the steel power of him as he held the ship with one hand.

"Have you got them?" he asked.

Richard nodded. Superman let go of the ship and it slipped away, eighty feet and a thousand tons of wood and metal, crashing down, back into the sea while he held them in a sure grip, high in the air, the four of them clinging together, inches from disaster, but all right.


	30. Chapter 30

Within a moment Superman was setting Richard's feet on the pontoon of the rocking plane. The sea was getting rougher by the second, tossing the fragile machine this way and that. Superman kept Richard steady with one hand and held out the other to Jason. They boy hesitated until Richard shouted at him to go. Jason reached out and took hold to the thick blue-clad arm. His eyes widened as he felt the unearthly strength that lifted him effortlessly into the plane. Still hovering, Superman braced Richard while he carefully lifted Lois and climbed in with her, telling Jason to buckle up. Laying Lois' limp body on the floor of the plane, Richard touched her face anxiously, feeling the pulse in her neck. He glanced back at the other man, sick with fear for her, knowing he could do nothing until he could get her back the many miles to Metropolis.

Superman's gaze was moving over Lois' body, and Richard's hair prickled as he realized he was not looking at her, but _into_ her. His ethereal blue yes turned to Richard. "She'll be fine," he said.

Wonder danced along Richard's nerves. Weeks of gut-wrenching jealousy, even the loss that had been spiking through his heart like one of these alien spires rising from the water since he'd seen his son's hand bend steel, all of it dissolved into awe. He no longer knew his place in all this strangeness, but he knew he could not cling to pettiness now. This was all bigger than that, bigger than him.

The plane rocked suddenly, violently, as another craggy spire surged up out the sea nearby. 

"I can't take off in this," Richard said, frustrated, fearful, almost to himself.

Superman's gaze steadied him as he said easily, "I'll give you a hand."

Richard felt relief, a quiet trust seeping through him, and he nodded in gratitude. Superman hovered silently just outside the door as Richard made his way across the rocking floor to the pilot's seat, pausing a moment to touch Jason reassuringly. The boy clung to his hand for a second, his eyes moving from Superman's unnaturally still body, framed by the red cape, snapping in the violent wind, to his father's worried face.

"It's okay, Jason," Richard told him. The boy nodded, let go his hand, and gripped the armrests while his mouth set bravely. Richard strapped in and glanced back, opening his mouth to say they were ready. The words died on momentarily on his lips, for the other man was looking at Lois, and his expression was a bittersweet mixture of tenderness and loss, a depth of emotion as vast as the stars from which he came. Superman turned and caught his gaze. Something passed between the two men then. Richard understood why Superman had remained outside the plane, and it humbled him. He tried again to speak, feeling compelled to tell him the truth, but Superman's eyes drowned out his desire, speaking more clearly than a voice could have.

_Take care of them._

Then he disappeared behind the plane which was swiftly lifted aloft, rising smoothly to safety, while Superman turned back to streak into the heart of the world's danger.

* * *

Superman scanned the monstrous island rising from the ocean, searching for Luthor, haunted by his responsibility for this disaster. Technology he left unguarded, Luthor perverting Krypton's memory, twisting what little he had left of who he was just as his humanity slipped from his fingers. He felt he was being swallowed by an abyss of nothingness, his identity ground to dust, only his duty left to him, and that only should he be able to find a way to roll back the changes Luthor had already wrought.

Spotting the helicopter at the edge of a broad plain, he descended, a cold fury icing his muscles so strongly that his landing was uncontrolled, his feet slamming down with such force that he left a small impact crater, fissures seaming in circles through the black crystal. Slowly, he turned to survey the towering spires, experiencing a strange vertigo to be standing on this lost remnant of the homeworld he had crossed the emptiness between galaxies to find was truly nothing but dust.

"See anything familiar?" a voice echoed across the harsh crystalline surface. "I suppose it might make you a little homesick – if you could remember your home."

Kal-el turned, intending to incinerate the ground before Luthor's feet, his anger hot and terrible for the theft of his heritage. But nothing happened. He took a step forward, and knew something was deadly wrong – and that he could not let Luthor see.

"I wonder if to you it feels a little alien. 'Live as one of them Kal-el,'" he quoted, speaking the name with vicious cruelty. "But _never_ forget the pride of your special heritage. Did you listen to that sage advice? Have you masqueraded as one of us all these long years?" Luthor laughed as they drew close, his eyes gleaming with maniacal pleasure, his whole being transformed from a mere schemer to something far more sinister, more driven, and horribly more powerful.

"You stole from me, Luthor," Superman said, his deep voice quiet with threat.

"Kal-el of Krypton," Luthor replied with a smile, "I have not yet begun to steal from you." His fist whipped out, striking his adversary. Triumph and joy rose in him like a warm tide as Superman crashed to the ground before him, weakened unto death by his final solution, his kryptonite-laced island. Luthor kicked him, rolling his heavy body down the crags to slam into stillness on the wide plain.

Slowly Lex stepped down to where he lay, gasping. "Crystals are amazing, aren't they? They inherit the traits of the minerals around them. Like a son inheriting the traits of his father. Watered down though, Weaker. You understood so little of what Jor-el gave you when he sent you to Earth."

Superman struggled to lift himself, but as he gained his hands and knees, Luthor brutally plowed his boots into his vulnerable body again and again. Bending over the groaning, crawling man, "All you could have done for us, superhero," he spat the title like an epithet, "and you sat on your secrets so we would worship you like a god. Well, now a man has brought you low, now a man owns Krypton's secrets, a simple human man will take your undeserved legacy and transform the earth with it!"

With a nod to his three remaining henchmen Luthor stepped back and watched with delicious satisfaction as they beat him, bloodied him, ground his face into water and Kryptonian sand. He stayed their hands at last, drawing from his pocket the sharp shard of kryptonite, contemplating the symmetry, the obviousness of this end, when it was pieces of his homeworld that were all that could harm him. Kal-el staggered to his feet near the edge of the island, so dazed that he left his back to them. The killing blow would be Lex's, finally, as it should be.

"You shame you father, Kal-el. You're not a man, and you're not worthy to be Krypton's heir!" He swung his arm, drove the spike in deep, drinking in the cry of anguish. He snapped the shard off at the skin and whispered in his ear, a final taunt for him to take into death, "See if you can fly now, Superman." And he shoved him over the cliff, savoring the long and silent fall like a man watching his lover dance.


	31. Chapter 31

He fell. His indestructible body transmitted agony and numbness in waves that buffeted a spirit pushed far beyond the breaking point. He fell, and fell, wind whipping his skin, he fell back through his life, memories spinning in his mind in flashes intense and remote by turns – 

Lara's lips soft upon his cheek, the wetness of her tears cooling rapidly as she lay him in his escape craft. The vivid white of Jor-el's hair unfocused in a baby's vision. A streak of green and a voice that promised salvation, but at the price of unending isolation.

Jonathon's strong hand trembling on his arm after he'd set the tractor down and confessed it hadn't even strained him to lift it with one hand.

Martha's face the first time she'd visited Metropolis, beaming pride at his accomplishments both in the cape and in the newsroom, every extraordinary feat accepted with uncomplicated, unconditional love.

Lois, breathless with amazement in his arms as they soared above the city, fearless, fierce, urging him faster so she could tell the world the truth about yet another injustice. Her still body, dusted with dirt, dead in his arms. Her touch on his hand by the Niagara River when she'd realized that Clark and Superman were one. Her desolate tears in the rain when he'd come to say goodbye.

A thousand faces he had saved from death and destruction; a thousand who had died under Zod's crushing heel.

And, an instant before he struck the cold, hard water, inexplicably, the face of a child with Lois' frank green eyes asking him simply, "Who are you?"

No one. Nothing.

The water swallowed him, his descent never ending, as infinite, as sure as his strength once was.

_You are not one of them._

_You are here for a reason._

_You're not a man. You're not worthy to be Krypton's heir._

He sank. Down, down, down.

* * *

Lois' eyes opened to gray, unfocused light. Sharp pain pounded through her head and memories crashed into her like the sucking water filling the prison of the pantry.

_Jason!_

She sat up, forcing past the nausea, willing her eyes to focus. The ground beneath her was jerky – she recognized the interior of the sea plane, and relief, pure and exhausting, flooded her as she fell to her knees beside Jason's chair, her hands running over him, reassuring herself he was alive, unharmed. His face lit to see her conscious and they whispered quickly to one another, murmurs indistinguishable in the noise of the plane, but enough to calm him and renew her strength. As she made it to the copilot seat, she spared him one last glance, trying to absorb the new truth of him, overwhelmed by the memory she had long fought back – a room of light, a single night, and a love that disaster, normalcy, and a whole universe could not disrupt.

Richard pulled off his headphones, exclaiming her name, his relief palpable in the midst of his struggles to hold the plane steady in the buffeting winds of the storm.

"What happened?" she asked, buckling her seat belt.

Richard replied simply, "Superman."

The word focused Lois like a laser. "Where is he?" she asked urgently, dread spreading through her gut.

Richard shook his head, "I don't know exactly. He got us in the air and that was the last I saw. How did you get on that ship? What is that thing behind us?"

"Lex Luthor," she said. "He's gone mad, and he has Kryptonian technology – that's what is building that island. He has – Richard, Superman's gone to confront him, to try to stop him, but that whole island is laced with kryptonite! We have to go back!"

Richard examined her determined, frightened face. He deliberately looked back at Jason, and then returned his gaze to her.

"If Luthor succeeds," she said evenly, "we're all dead anyway. Or alive in a world not worth living in. There's no time."

Richard felt it again, being a small mark in a huge picture, a cog in the machine dragging the world back from the brink. Lois, more accustomed to this otherworldly power, had not even hesitated to decide what had to be done. She would risk even Jason, and Jason – might well be able to weather danger more easily than either of the fragile adults. Might, maybe, if – he sat suspended in indecision, terrified for his child, for his love, for the whole of humanity. But he had tracked down death squads, exposed dictators, smuggled secrets over the borders of corrupt regimes. If none of those threats had held the entire planet in the balance with only a few hands, they were still no small feats.

He nodded, "All right." He banked the plane, turning them in a wide circle. "But how are we going to find them?"

Lois raised her voice and looked back at her son, "Jason, we have to find Superman. Look out the windows. Look as hard as you can."

* * *

Tense minutes passed with Richard fighting the buffeting winds stirred by the emerging land mass, and Lois and Jason searching the island and the waves below for any sign – a scrap of red or blue. Lois' nerves were stretched tight; for all her brave words to Richard, her thoughts were scattered under the fear for Jason as they circled the massive crystalline structure shot through with deadly kryptonite. She wondered again if it had it been his exposure to the irradiated mineral that activated Jason's latent powers? Would he be protected from it by his human genes? Could he even survive normal growth with his mixed heritage? Every cough, asthma attack, temperature spike, headache, rash he'd ever had came back to haunt her in those terrible moments – his fragility suddenly made perfect sense, and a part of her thanked God she had never known or she would not have been able to function those first few years, to think that his own biology could be tearing him apart.

And Superman – was he already dead? Had he flown straight into Luthor's trap? Lex would torture him first, she knew it, and she could hardly bear the thought. If he was gone, Lex had won, for humanity could not hope to defeat Kryptonian weapons unleashed. A hideous future spun out before her, worse even than Zod, for that would ultimately have been a quick death for Earth. Lex would create an empire, a Reich, to survive the eons, perverting human history to suit his boundless ego.

Beneath all these thoughts of maternal protectiveness and human strategy sat an ache of icy desolation squeezing her heart. If he had died thinking he was alone, thinking he was the last, thinking he had lost her forever – her eyes shut hard, unwillingly but irresistibly. What a fool she was, all these years, trying to deny the single, undeniable truth of her being. What an injustice she had done to Richard, to Jason, to him, even if he had never returned to Earth.

She could only pray she would have the chance to bear the anger of all three men for her lies.

"Mommy," Jason's small, high voice sounded clear as a bell and her head snapped up to see him pointing down at the water, "Superman's down there."

"Are you sure?" She turned to search the roiling waves.

"He's falling away," Jason said, in a hushed tone.

"Richard!" But he was already angling the plane down into a small patch of rough sea framed by thin spikes rising, rising, inexorably toward the sun.

The instant the plane touched water, she tore the buckles off and leapt for the door, swinging it up, "Jason – where?" And as Richard screamed her name, she dove into the water where her son pointed, kicking hard, swimming into the icy, breath-stealing depths with only a single thought.

If it were not for the cape, the flash of red that had sown hope in her heart in a hundred perilous instances, she would not have seen him, caught him, been able to pull him to her. The water was crushing her chest as she struggled to draw him up, his dead weight terrifying and nearly beyond her strength. Exhaustion tugged at her leg muscles, her lungs burned, and she felt her grip on his shoulders begin to slip as the cold stole her strength away. Only a few more feet – she kicked harder, his slick head against her cheek, she would NOT LET –

They broke the surface and she gasped for breath, trying to see the plane, barely able to tread water and keep both her and his face above the waves. Then Richard was beside her and together they pulled Superman to the pontoon, levering him up, into the plane, Richard moving swiftly to the pilot's seat, the plane rocking with dangerous force, Jason watching silently, with wide, frightened eyes.

Lois held him with one arm and braced their bodies with the other as the plane pitched and rolled, Richard cursing, fighting the powerful waves, and she knew it would be a miracle if they could get into the air. But he was still, and cold, and she did not know how poisoned he was – if they could not get away from this field of deadly energy – 

"Richard!"

"I'm trying!" He wrestled the machine, the water, gravity, the plane pitching forward suddenly, falling. She bent over him, her legs straining against the passenger seat to keep them from sliding down the now raked floor, and she willed the plane to win, to catch the air – flight, for him, for the world…

Her eyes opened as she heard Richard laugh in triumph, the floor leveled, and they were airborne. Unlocking her muscles, Lois moved to kneel over his unconscious body, her hands wiping his still face, her lips aching, straining to speak a name they remembered even if her mind did not. His chest moved, barely, under her trembling fingers, but he did not stir, even as they cleared the island, moving away. The plane bumped, making his body jump and a low moan issued from his lips, sending Lois into a panicked examination of his torso, his back – only a quarter inch of the green spike protruded under her fingers, and she tasted bile as she turned him to see it. Her hands tore through the tool kit, coming up with pliers to draw the vicious shard out, inch after ugly inch and he cried out, an agony she had never heard from him before. Tears were running freely down her face as she shoved the door open and threw it with all her strength, falling to her knees once again beside him.

Gently her anxious fingers touched his jaw, his forehead, and at last, his eyes opened and slowly focused on her face. His hand reached up and brushed her wet cheek, she caught his fingers in her hand. Neither spoke for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity.

But then he rose, making his way unsteadily to his feet, his eyes moving from her, to Jason, to Richard.

"How did you find me?" he asked hoarsely.

Lois had lost her voice, looking mutely at her, at _their,_ son, who, amazingly, smiled up at him.

"Thank you," Superman said, and he turned to open the plane's door.

"What are you doing?" Lois cried.

"I have to go back."

"No!" the word was torn from her. "You're hurt. That island – you don't even know your limits. You can't go," desperation edged into her tone. "You can't go – not alone. You're not –"

Kal-el shook under the weight of memories, her words assaulting him with what he had stolen from her, how she had once said almost these exact things to him, long ago, on that still Canadian street, when she knew everything, all of him.

_You're not worthy_…

She reached for him, caught his shoulders, touched his neck, pleading with him, careless of Richard, Jason, needing to tell him before he was lost to her forever, "Please, listen to me, please…"

He took her hand, and put it away from him, his eyes traveling to the small boy watching from behind her. She was for that, not for him. His fingers slipped from hers.

"Good-bye, Lois."

And he was gone.


	32. Chapter 32

Lois was unable to speak as they flew back to Metropolis

Lois was unable to speak as they flew back to Metropolis. She stared at her hands clenched in her lap, wishing she knew how to pray. She could not imagine how he hoped to defeat Luthor alone. Her thoughts struggled through despair as she tried to force herself to come up with a plan, a way to help, something – she had to do something!

"Lois," Richard said quietly.

She looked at him, tears in her eyes, tears of shame and loss. "I'm sorry, Richard," she whispered.

He swallowed hard, glancing at her briefly before turning back to steer them toward the bay and the dock outside their house.

"About me," he said, "or about Jason?"

Lois' breath left her, and she looked back over her shoulder quickly to see the little boy, amazingly, sleeping, slumped over his seat harness. "How –"

"When you were out and we were trapped. He bent the metal door." After a moment, he glanced at her again, and their eyes held, communicating in that way that comes from years of living together.

"I didn't know," she said simply, softly. "I didn't know it was even possible."

He nodded, and it seemed a normal, accepting gesture, but she knew it was shock – to have the impossible thing he had seen confirmed.

"You're still his father, Richard. You're the only father he's ever known. You may be the only father he'll," her voice broke, "ever know."

He said nothing more as he banked the plane in toward the dock, setting it down smoothly. They both got up, performing the docking procedures without words, habitually. Lois lifted Jason's sleeping body, and Richard helped her onto the wooden pier. But as she finished the step, she saw that he had frozen, was staring up into the sky, his eyes wide, stunned, fearful. She turned quickly – and gasped.

The island, the entire, enormous, mile wide island was rising toward the stratosphere, seeming to float up, up, uncannily, slowly.

Jason raised his head, squinted at the sight.

Lois shook her head in denial, her face twisted with pain, begging silently not to hear the words, soft in her ear.

"But you said the green rocks would kill him, Mommy."

Her eyes closed and tears, kicked free, ran down her face.

"They're all around him." Doom in the sweet voice of a four year old child. How could he be lifting such a massive object, even if it wasn't laced with kryptonite? If his strength failed, and the island fell back into the sea...

She wished desperately that she had Jason's eyesight, that she could see him. To break earth's sucking gravity, to overcome the deadly radiation – what limits would he not burst to protect them all? She knew he would go to the ends of even his incredible strength, give the last breath.

The island became a dot in the sky, then a mote, then nothing, but still none of them could move. And then the dot reappeared, falling. For an instant Lois thought it was the island, until she realized that even as it descended, it was not growing larger.

"No," it was barely a whisper.

And then she was running, dashing for the car, holding Jason close, Richard on her heels.

They tried, but by the time they reached the interstate, he had already struck ground. The radio reported the crater his body left in Central Park, the furious rush of emergency personnel to recover him. The stunned voice of the announcer finally faltering.

"We know nothing more, nothing, I'm sorry, listeners. For those just tuning in, Superman has fallen to earth after removing the mysterious new continent to space. He has been taken to Metropolis Hospital. His condition is unknown."

* * *

In Kansas, Martha Kent called Ben Hubbard on her cell phone from the truck and told him to watch Shelby until she got back. He wanted to know where she was going in such a hurry.

"Metropolis. Clark's had an accident." And that was all she would say.

* * *

They'd turned finally for the Planet, for neither cared to go back to the house. To even think of it as "home" was difficult for them both. In the bullpen there were distractions, other people to deal with.

It didn't really matter.

Richard tried to do some work, but couldn't concentrate. No one wanted to talk about anything except Superman. Even Perry was standing broodingly over two front page mockups announcing different fates of the Man of Steel. Richard wanted to talk to him, but what was he supposed to say? So, Uncle Perry, big day, huh? The world almost ended, Superman's on the brink of death. By the way, Lois no longer loves me and Jason is not my kid.

Had she ever really loved him?

Now that he had been shoved to the periphery of his own life, he had to ask the question. He knew Lois was not malicious; selfish, yes, but not deliberately hurtful. He'd always known she had been hurting when they met, and he had liked the idea that he had been there to bring her back down to earth, to help her see the simple pleasures of mundane life. He'd always thought that Jason had meant that he was right, that the world was trying to tell her that she needed to settle down. But now he wondered if he had ever understood anything at all about her.

He wanted to be angry. He was angry, but not at her, not at Superman. It was hard to hate someone who had not only saved your life, but your family's lives, your city, and your entire planet. Maybe he wasn't angry. Maybe he was just confused, confused as to why his life had become entangled with all of this. There must be a reason. There must be...

"Daddy?"

Richard looked down to see Jason, who was staring at his shoes. The little boy seemed reluctant to go on, but finally he said, in a small, painful voice, "Mommy's crying."

Richard closed his eyes. After a moment, he stood up resolutely, took Jason's hand and together, they went to Lois.

He put his hand on her shoulder and she started, guiltily looking up at him.

Richard smiled gently, "You don't have to be here."

* * *

Walking past the crowds outside the hospital was surreal. Richard had been right. As people saw her, recognized her, they pressed back, made a path for her and Jason. A lump rose in her throat at the looks on their faces. They looked at her as if maybe there was something she could do, to heal him. She wanted to tell them that was foolish. That she was here for purely selfish reasons. It wouldn't matter. They were a mass of pure need. Their hero, home at last, and now hurt, dying. She hoped that, somehow, he knew how much they all loved him.

Impossible. But she felt Jason's tiny hand in hers and knew the impossible – wasn't, so much.

The people became a blur as she entered the building. She followed white coats blindly, stopping abruptly when someone said, "This way, Ms. Lane."

He looked somehow smaller in the plain cloth of the hospital robe. So still. She stood unmoving in the doorway, staring, afraid to approach. After a moment, Jason let go of her hand and went to the chair in the corner, where the suit was folded neatly. Her eyes followed him, then moved slowly to the window's blinds. Like a sleepwalker she moved over to them, drawing them back, letting the late afternoon sunlight flood in.

He needed the sun.

She turned again to look at him, now bathed in the golden glow. Seemingly without her conscious will, her feet moved her closer to the bed. She bent, her hands hovering helplessly, uselessly.

"I... I wanted to tell you," she whispered so softly she could barely hear it herself. She bent even closer, glancing back at Jason, who was running his hand over the gold and red crest, tracing the S – would he be able to hear? "You're not alone. There has always been me, and now – now there's Jason too. He's yours. He's your son. Our son." Lois' eyes closed and she moved her mouth to kiss him gently on his still lips. "Please come back to me."


	33. Chapter 33

Martha Kent stood among the crowds outside the hospital, just one in a sea of humanity, just another worried face. If it was a cruel fate to not be able to see him now, not to be able to demand that she be allowed to see her boy, well, Martha had never expected life to be fair. If it was, she would never have been blessed with him in the first place, because she knew she had never done anything to deserve the place she had been given in his fate. When your life is shaped by a miracle, you don't question the price that comes with it.

She just hoped they knew not to draw the blinds.

She waited, watching, just as she had when he was a little boy, the first time he had lain twitching on the ground with a headache so vicious it seemed a seizure, not knowing if earth's demands on his alien body would simply rip him to pieces. She waited as she had the twelve years he had been gone north, never knowing if he had found something of his true home to draw him away from his adoptive world. She waited as she had when he had borne the weight of his failure with Zod, afraid that his mighty heart and indomitable spirit would finally break over the loss of so many lives. She waited as she had these last five years, knowing that her own time was growing short and wondering if she would get to see him one last time before she died. She waited as any mother waits through her child's trials, helpless and hoping.

She saw Lois emerge from the hospital doors and searched her face for any sign, but the other woman seemed nearly dazed, and she was instantly inundated by flashes and microphones, and hungry shouting voices. Lois kept walking, refusing to answer, and she reached down as the press of people came closer, lifting her child to her hip. He had told her of Lois' son, said it in a tone that acknowledged she was lost to him forever now, for he was too honorable to ever intrude upon another's family. Martha's head bowed for a moment, hurting with him, for he loved Lois so. She thought of Jonathon, and her heart ached with loss.

But when she looked up again, she caught another glimpse of them, she saw the boy's profile, and her hand went to her throat in shock. Her eyes instantly turned up to the window of his room and she struggled to catch her breath.

"Oh, Clark," she said softly, "son, you have to wake up now."

* * *

Sunlight, slanted, warm and golden. He smiled softly into its rays, enjoying the caress of Sol's heat on his skin. He didn't want to get up, the dream he was having was too lovely, too precious and impossible for him to give it up just yet. But he heard the voice calling him, and even though he wanted to complain, "Just a minute more, Ma," there was an edge in her tone that told him he had wasted enough time. _Chores to do_, he thought idly.

But when he opened his eyes and saw the hospital room, breathed deep and smelled the scent of Lois' hair and Jason's breath still lingering, he knew that it had not been a dream, and everything, everything had changed. Except, except... what it had changed to was something he knew, had always known. Life was a circle and he had finally found the beginning point again.

* * *

Richard had actually waited for them, parking blocks away and circling as close as he could once she called. She was humbled by his goodness. She hated hurting him. But once they returned to the house and put Jason to bed, finally facing each other alone, there was nothing to do but acknowledge the truth.

"I'll look for a place tomorrow," he told her.

"No," she said. "The plane dock is here. You should keep the house." She smiled weakly, "I was never much good at living in the suburbs anyway. I'll get an apartment in the city."

A frown crossed his face. "I don't know how I feel about Jason living in the –" he stopped abruptly. Did he have any say in this anymore?

"Shared custody, Richard," she said softly. "Half of each week with you, half with me. And he practically lives in the city half the week already as often as we have him at the office."

"What if he," his words stumbled, "_he_ wants Jason some of the time?"

"We don't even know if Superman is going to live," she said, blinking back tears. "Even if he does we can't," she cleared the lump in her throat, fighting back dread, "we can't let knowledge of his paternity out. Not until Jason is grown and can protect himself. He's a target now."

The color drained from Richard's face. His personal pain receded suddenly before the realization of what she meant. Superman's son. The perfect hostage to make the Man of Steel do your bidding. The perfect victim upon whom to wreak vengeance.

"Oh, God, Lois..."

"We can handle it," she said. "We have to."

He was amazed at her calm, but then the perfect hostage used to be her. This was just the facts of life when you were part of Superman's family – and that thought threw him into confusion once again. He was now bound to the superhero for life. He, who had been so happy with domesticity and normalcy. Richard was suddenly very, very tired, "How are we ever going to explain this all to him?"

"I don't know," she said. "We'll find a way. But we have to wait until we know exactly what there is to tell him."

Richard nodded, "All right. Okay."

Then there was nothing more to say. He turned and went into the house, trudging up the stairs, hesitating between doorways, and finally choosing the guest room, where he laid down after kicking his shoes off and fell at once into an exhausted sleep.

Lois stayed outside in the cool air, the last chill of winter still holding onto the city, unable to think, just staring out over the water.

* * *

Kal-el of Krypton, Clark Kent of Kansas, Superman, knelt at the side of his son's bed and marveled at the wonder of his life. His eyes moved over the small body of the boy, the perfect little fingers, the mess of curls, some stuck to his forehead with a kid's night sweat, the arc of delicate eyelashes spread upon his cheek.

Very softly, he spoke words he had heard as a child, said them father to son, and felt his heart swell in his chest "fit to burst", as Pa had often said in his pride. He touched Jason's cheek and wondered how he hadn't seen it, the likeness, his own features writ small in a human visage, mixed with Lois...

It was time to set everything right.

He slipped from the window and alighted before her. Her eyes widened as she rose.

"You're," she could barely speak, "you're all right?"

"I heard you, Lois."

Emotions flickered across her face at lightning speed. "Well," she said shakily, "what do you think?"

He smiled, and it was such a radiant expression that Lois felt almost as if she could lift right off the ground without his help.

"We need to tell him," she said. "All three of us, together."

He nodded, "Just say when." He stepped carefully closer to her, "And then, you and I need to talk."

She nodded wordlessly, and finally managed to say, "Richard and I... we're not – we're not staying to together," she finished softly, turning hopeful eyes to search his.

A troubled cloud passed over the light that sprang into his eyes at her words. "We should talk," he said again.

"Has something," she pushed past the hitch in her voice, "changed?"

He looked at her with such tenderness and regret that she stepped forward, reaching for him, but he avoided her touch. "Something may," he said. "There are things you need to know, Lois."


	34. Chapter 34

It went better than any of them hoped, but each had underestimated the resiliency of childhood. They sat out on the porch – Lois, Richard and Jason, and Lois began by asking Jason if he remembered Lindsay in his day school who had a father and two mothers. He did, and seemed to require no explanation of divorce and remarriage. He ven volunteered that Daniel had two mommies. Lois said that was true and went on to talk about how all families were different, that some had just two daddies, some just two mommies, some a daddy and two mommies, and some a mommy and two daddies.

"We didn't tell you before now, because we didn't know," she said. "But you have two daddies."

He just looked at her, curious as to why she would say something so odd, "No, I don't."

"Yes, you do, honey. Really."

Jason looked at Richard for confirmation. He nodded at the boy.

"How come I've never met him?" Jason asked.

"He's been gone, far away, for a long time," Lois said. "Since before you were born." She paused, then asked, "Do you remember pushing the piano, on the boat?"

His little forehead creased as he nodded and looked down guiltily.

Richard said swiftly, "You didn't do anything wrong, Jason."

"I didn't mean to hurt him," Jason mumbled. "We're not supposed to hit."

Lois and Richard exchanged a rueful glance – as each realized what a good thing it was that he had learned that at a young age.

"That's right, honey," Lois said. "But it was okay then. You saved me."

He kicked his feet, swinging them back and forth and looking away, plainly still disturbed by the memory.

"Have you," Lois began uncertainly, "have you wondered how it was that you could do that? Push that heavy piano so hard?"

Still not looking at either of them, he nodded.

She took a deep breath, "It's because your other daddy is Superman."

The boy raised his eyes, wide and wondering, then said eagerly, "Does that mean I can fly?"

Lois and Richard both gave surprised parental laughs at that, though Richard's was a slightly painful sound.

"Maybe one day," the voice came from above them, and Superman descended slowly, to alight before them.

Jason stared at him, and all three of the adults barely breathed. Jason stood up, hesitating. Then he went to Richard, climbing up on his lap.

Richard White's eyes closed for a moment and he bowed his head over his son's, putting his arms around him loosely.

Jason held onto his arm. "Not right now?" he asked softly, peeking cautiously at Superman.

"I didn't fly until I was thirteen," Superman replied with a small smile of remembrance.

"Oh," Jason looked disappointed for a second, then settled further onto Richard's lap and began to pick at the buttons of his shirt.

Lois gave Superman a worried look, seeing what Richard probably missed in the steady visage, that Jason had managed to cut him, but he accepted it as only natural. "Do you have any other questions, honey?" she asked.

He shook his head. After a moment, Lois shrugged at the two men. After a moment Richard stood, still holding Jason, and said awkwardly, "I'll, um, just – take him up, and – "

"I'd like to talk to you, if that's all right," Superman said to him. "Perhaps Lois could – " he looked at her. She blinked and then jumped right in.

"Sure, of course, here," she held out her arms and Richard transferred Jason, who was still casting curious but silent looks at Superman. He wrapped his arms around his mother's neck as she said, "Let's go in, honey."

As she stepped through the glass door and turned to close it, Jason asked, "Can I have a cape?"

Richard laughed unsteadily as he ran a hand over his face, rubbing his temples hard. When he could avoid it no longer, he looked up at Superman.

"I'm sorry," the superhero said.

"Yeah," Richard sighed, "me too." Then he watched as Superman walked over and sat in one of the deck chairs, across the table from where Richard had been. Something about that seemed utterly bizarre, for him to just – sit. Richard remembered watching the half-a-bazillion-dollar luxury yacht fall from his one hand, and didn't know what to do. So he sat down too, and just looked across at the other man.

"I was raised here on earth," Superman began abruptly, "in Kansas."

Richard just stared for a second and then sat up a little, "I beg your pardon?"

"On a farm, in south Kansas," Superman said. "When Krypton's fate became obvious, my parents put me in a starship – I was barely a year old – and sent me here and that's where I landed."

"I really – I really don't know what to do with that," Richard said. "I thought you came here as an adult. I mean, everyone thinks that."

"I know. It wouldn't be safe for my mother if more was known."

"Your – mother - ?"

Superman nodded. "But it's my father I wanted to talk to you about. My fathers."

Richard was frowning in confusion, so Superman went on, "My power, my knowledge – these things come from my Kryptonian father. But my sense of right and wrong, my ability to be gentle, my... my humanity – I owe those to my earth father. It sometimes frightens me to think how things would have turned out if anyone else had found me. He was a kind and wise man."

"Was?"

"He died right before I graduated high school."

That made Richard shake his head as if he'd just received a ringing blow. "You went to high school?"

Superman nodded, "I want you to know it's possible for Jason to have a normal experience growing up – well, relatively, anyway. I did, so he can." He stopped and seemed to be searching for the right words. "I'm the only one who can teach Jason how to handle his power, but," he hesitated uncertainly, "but that's less important, ultimately, than him learning that he is human. There's nothing – there's nothing that I would take away from him, or any way I would hurt him, and there are going to be so many times that I can't be there," his voice was growing thick, "and I don't know the first thing about being a father. I –" he stopped and swallowed hard. "I hope you'll let me know if I do anything stupid."

Richard's mouth was hanging slightly open in shock.

"Please promise me you will," Superman said. Richard still just stared. "Please."

The other man nodded slightly, finally closing his mouth and swallowing. "I'll try. In all of this, Jason's the most important thing."

Superman smiled, "Yes, he definitely i-" he cut off, his head turning slightly, as he heard some distant sound. "I'm sorry. I have to go." He stood and was gone into the air, in a flash.

Lois came out onto the porch several minutes later, her impatience finally winning out. She found Richard standing, leaning against one of the columns. She glanced around.

"He left. There was an emergency." Richard sounded like he was beginning to find his way between confusion and awe.

Lois hid her disappointment with a slight smile, "That happens a lot." Still slightly surprised, she told him, "Jason really seems okay."

"Wait'll it sinks in," he replied.

"Wait till he starts lifting cars," she said.

Richard laughed at the dry comment, and shook his head.

"I was going to have a glass of wine," Lois said. "Want to join me?"

"Sure, I could use a drink." They turned to go in, Lois sliding back the glass door, Richard reaching above her so he could close it once they were in. He tried not to reflect on how this easy choreography was not long for the world.

"Did you know Superman went to high school? And in Kansas." he asked, his disbelief apparent in his tone.

Lois laughed at the idea, then frowned. "No. No, I don't think… I don't think I did…know that…"


	35. Chapter 35

Lois and Richard had decided on a simple system for the time being. They would go back to the house each evening and have dinner, then she would leave for her new apartment once Jason was put to bed. They both felt it was too much to spring their separation on him right on top of the whole superdad thing. He was accustomed to one or the other of them being gone to the newspaper by the time he got up, and would find nothing strange in Lois not being there in the mornings. Richard had, of course, offered that it would be fine with him if she stayed at the house for a while, but he knew even as he said it that she would refuse, which she did, as gently as she could. He understood why, even as he felt a lingering wish that he could pretend this was a normal lover's triangle, and he the wronged honorable (almost) husband. But it wasn't, and he wasn't. He was somehow a part of something extraordinary that had brought Jason into the world. He had chanced into being a guardian of the most precious child on earth. A bruised heart was not such a horrible price to pay. So, as he said good night to Lois and knew that she was hurrying away in the hopes that Superman would come to her soon, he felt the strange sensation of wishing that it would be so for her, and for the hero. Theirs, he could see, was not an easy love. That it endured all it had said plainly to him that forces greater than his desires were at work.

He might have been surprised to know that Lois cried as she drove away, cried for love of him, cried for the simplicity of love and home and hearth and family that would never again be hers, that she could have had if she had only stayed. It surprised her, the violence of the emotion and the tears, the sobs that were rent from her throat, the trembling of her hands on the steering wheel. Life with Richard had taught her so much, so much that she truly valued now, that she hadn't even imagined before in her self-absorbed, career-driven ambition. She was a better mother for having loved him, a better person for having shared years with him. One day, she vowed, she would find a way to let him know that.

Even so, when she reached the new place, a rooftop apartment, like her old one, like the one where they had first taken flight, her trembling took on a different timbre. The way was clear, all the lies of her life gone at last. She could come to him with conscience clear and confess that she had never stopped loving him, that she was joyous at his return, at the truth of their child together.

She prepared in the way of a woman welcoming home a husband who had been gone to war, slowly, sensually, with tender anxiety and anticipation. She would wait, she knew, but it was not as long as she feared before she heard the soft knock at the glass doors and turned to see him there.

Her heart pounded so hard that she shook as she went to open them.

They stood close and she let her eyes wander over him, hair as black as space, eyes bluer than sea or sky, square jaw, tender lips, the breadth and density of his shoulders and chest. She had to close her eyes at last, to seal the sight of him in her memory. When she opened them again, turned her face up to him, she raised her arms, came to him, like a magnet to steel.

But he stopped her.

"What's wrong?" she asked, a tremulous whisper.

"You have to know the truth, Lois," the sound of his voice, even speaking such ominous words, only sent a shudder of desire through her.

"What truth? You know you can tell me anything," she reached for him again, managed to brush his cheek before he caught her hands and put them away from him. "What is it?" She searched his eyes, truly confused by the pain she saw there. "Did something happen while you were gone that you haven't told me? I don't care what it is, I don't-"

He shook his head, and his expression was so desolate that it stole her voice. Finally, he said hoarsely, "I have something that belongs to you." She came, frowning slightly, as he walked her over to the couch and drew her down to sit, while he knelt on one knee beside her. He held up in the palm of one open hand a small crystal, which she recognized as Kryptonian. She started to protest that this couldn't be hers, but again, the look in his eyes froze her words.

"Please," he begged, "please know that I thought it was best for you. I told myself that you – that it wasn't your fault and you would never believe that no matter how I told you. It was killing you, Lois, and it was killing me to see that happening."

"What are you –"

He whispered, "Please forgive me," and raised the crystal to touch her forehead.

Lois gasped and her whole body went rigid. She felt a fine spray upon her face, was dazzled by bright sunlight, heard a mother's desperate screams, saw him descend from the skies, felt her own fast beating heart and heard her own voice, soft –

"Clark?"

In moments she relived it all – the revelations, the sacrifice of his powers, the passionate night that had floated so long in her memory at long last clicking into its rightful place, the fight in the northern diner…

Zod.

She felt her own despair, her desolate resolve, her joy and terror at his return, the terrible aftermath of the days at the Planet, so near to him, but imprisoned by his secret, the guilt as the world struggled to recover – the guilt and sickening confusion that came from suspecting herself to be so selfish that she cared less for how many had died than she did for how their deaths meant he would never allow himself to love her again. The night he came to her, told her he was leaving, the rain-soaked flight and dark and intimate aching, made bearable by knowing, knowing him through and through…

"Stop," she barely even heard her own weak cry. Weak, and too late, for all of it was hers again, every second. The crystal fell back into his open hand as he drew it away and she crumpled, her hands covering her face, discovering her cheeks were wet, her mind reeling, for all this was not even the worst.

She raised her head, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

"Kansas," she said softly, bitterly.

He did not move except to bow his head for a moment. Then he looked up and took the full force of her expressionless stare.

"I had no right," he said.

Lois stood up. With straight back and steady steps she walked to the glass door, slid it open and looked back at him, still there on one knee, absurdly, like a suitor proposing.

"Get out."


	36. Chapter 36

He stood and approached her, "Lois –"

"Get out," she repeated.

"Please, lis-"

"Get out!" she shouted.

He responded quietly, "There's more."

Her eyebrows went up, "There's more? There's more than you stealing thoughts out of my mind and disappearing with them for five years? There's more than you standing there before you left and watching as I got together with Richard out of pain and loss? There's more," she was roaring at him now, in a high rage, "than you with all your Kryptonian knowledge, not realizing you could knock me up? God damn you, Clark, Kal-el – Jesus, you're the father of my child and I don't even know what to call you! What were you thinking? How could you possibly believe the right thing to do was to remove my memory of all that happened between us? That was the most important thing that ever happened in my life! All we are are our memories. You changed who I was! You changed what kind of mother I was, what kind of reporter, what kind of woman! Without my permission! Are you out of your mind?"

"Lois, it was – you could barely function. You were sick with it –"

"I was pregnant, you moron," she said flatly. "Do you honestly think I couldn't handle it? I was in mourning and it had been all of a month! You couldn't have given me some time to recover?"

His earnest face was racked with pain, "You were falling apart –"

He had seen her mad before, even livid, but right then he could swear the temperature in the room actually went up as her face colored and she spat, "Bullshit! _You_ were falling apart. You didn't do that to spare me, but to spare yourself. You thought it was somehow noble to keep your secrets and tell yourself you were bearing the pain and the guilt for me, when what you were really doing was hiding! Deciding your duty meant we couldn't be together cut me down to the quick – you did that and by God, you should have stood the pain it caused me. Instead you stole my right to make my own decisions based on the truth! Life is messy, Clark! It hurts! The pain changes us and that's the way it is! You can't hide it away to try and keep everything nice and neat and perfect. When something terrible happens to Jason, and it will eventually – he'll fall in love and lose someone, a friend will die, he'll try something ambitious and fail – and you're not going to be able to stop it. Are you going to take his memories too just so he won't hurt? Would you want the memory of your parents taken from you? I can't –" her anger was breaking now, her face twisting, "You have to go!"

"You need to know the rest, Lois," he said.

Her hard stare was like a knife, "You give me back everything that is mine, right now, and then get out!"

"I have given you everything that was yours. It's not your memory I need to show you. It's one of mine."

She backed up a step, "I don't want inside your head. I don't even want to look at you!"

He nodded, his brow creased with sadness, "I understand. And you're right. You're right about everything. I want you to understand where it all started. What I did that brought all of this down on our heads." She didn't budge, still staring at him malevolently. "It's something that happened between us – don't you want to know it all?"

Her eyes flashed threateningly that he would dare to tempt her that way. "If I have all my memories back then why wouldn't I know about this thing that happened between us?"

"I –" he stopped. "There is no way to describe it. You have to see."

Lois was exhausted suddenly. She felt like a pane of glass with weights being stacked at her center, certain she would shatter at any second, disintegrate into tiny little pieces to be swept up, swept away. How could he? How could he even bear to see her with the knowledge of their time erased? This betrayal was so huge, so total and cruel.

"Please, Lois," he begged. "I will never ask anything from you for me, ever again."

He looked near to broken, and some small part of her was moved by it, but her mind rebelled at the thought of any closeness with him now. In the end though, she could not stand not knowing the truth, no matter how horrible it might be. She could not imagine what was worse than what he had already revealed, what he might deem the cause of all this grief. Grudgingly, she took one step closer. He still held the crystal, and he reached for her hand, lifting it to touch the crystal as he laid it on his own forehead.

The scene that played in her mind made no sense. She saw a dirt road far below her, in a desolate brown wasteland. A massive fissure had split the road and a car, a long red car had been swallowed. Only its back right fender showed above the crack. She felt terror, horror as the view descended toward the road, saw hands, his hands, lifting the car free, ripping the door off. There, in her apartment, Lois' legs nearly gave out, but his free arm caught her and held her up as she saw her own body spill from the car along with mounds of dirt.

She saw through his eyes as he lifted her corpse, heard his swirling thoughts, saw his memories of Jonathon's funeral laid over what was happening, felt the kiss he laid on her dead lips, the denial welling up out of him, and heard his terrible resounding cry of despair.

She barely understood what happened next, the speed, the tearing of time's fabric, feeling his body like an artillery shell driving into the ground beneath the road the car would travel a few seconds from then (from now, from when?), shoring up the road from below, shooting back out, ripping through time again to return to the same moment he had left, but now the road was firm, the car merely out of gas – and his memory dovetailed with what existed in her mind, as she got out of the rented car and berated him, as they leaned toward each other –

He drew her hand away from his forehead, the crystal lay, warm and pulsing, in her palm. She looked at it, unable to find words.

"It was wrong," he whispered hoarsely. "It was a crime against nature. I have paid the price for it – and I would do it again, Lois. I would do it a thousand times if I had to."

She looked up at him numbly, looked into his eyes as he stepped back, out the doors and, following her demand, took flight.


	37. Chapter 37

The Daily Planet had been firebombed, attacked by evil super-villains, infiltrated by Intergang, bought by corporate thugs, and shot at by remote controlled giant robots, but to Lois it had never felt more dangerous that it did now. She had already been dealing with the surreptitious glances and whispers of the rest of the news team, speculating on how long she and Richard were likely to stay together now that Superman had returned – an exercise that seemed particularly twisted to her, and that caused her to snap viciously at her colleagues without even a trace of apology. She fully expected money to change hands when it came out that they had broken up. There was an absurd irony in that, considering. Then there was Richard, who she felt needed protecting, nearly as much as Jason did, from the dashed hopes of their newly refashioned family. But the capper, the cherry on top, the straw that broke the camel's back – was sitting quietly hunched at his desk behind thick glasses and an overly pressed suit.

She strode straight to him first thing the morning after. "Clark," she said brusquely, all but snapping her fingers. He stood and followed her meekly to her office. The door closed and she saw the subtle shift in his physicality – but only out of the corner of her eye, for she would not look at him directly. While sorting through her mail, she explained the arrangement she and Richard had made for Jason in the evenings, and told him, "It would be good if you could stop by, when you can, and spend some time with Jason."

He nodded, watching her carefully. "I'd like that. But I don't want to –"

"He needs to get to know you," she said, her tone still neutral.

"How does Richard feel about this?' he asked.

"We've discussed it. He agrees that Jason should get used to you."

"How do you feel about it?"

She looked up finally, eyes flashing, "Do you really want me to answer that?"

He held her gaze steadily, and said quietly, "Yes."

"Well, I'm not going to," she stated flatly. "Don't ask me again. We can discuss work, and we can discuss Jason. That's it."

She meant it and she stuck to it in the months that passed. It was plain to Richard that things had not gone as she'd hoped, which in turn sent him into fantasies of reconciliation, and she bore his hopeful glances as best she could, but she had no interest in taking him up on the unspoken offer. What he did speak, when he finally asked, she had to refuse him that as well. How could she explain any of what had happened and not reveal that Clark and Superman were the same person? Any time she thought of it, she ground her teeth at his stupidity, telling Richard about Kansas. Sooner or later Richard would figure it out with that vital piece of information – and then what? She resented having to protect his secrets. She wondered if and when they should tell Jason, and she worried about the confusion it would cause him when it did eventually come to light. Besides, it seemed bizarre to have him in the office interacting with Clark, not knowing that this was his father. Almost as bizarre as watching Superman sitting on the floor of their house, helping the little boy build spaceships with giant Legos and laughing, the sound always carrying a cutting edge of sadness.

Jason held the three of them together in this tenuous partnership. He was not immune to the rampant tension, but his innocence eased it somehow. When focused on him, the adults could forget their tangled emotions – almost.

Lois struggled not only to deal with the betrayal she felt, but the memories themselves. He could say all he wanted that she bore no responsibility for what happened with Zod, but there was no absolution for her. She had wanted him all to herself, and thousands had died for it. And the other thing, the crime, as he called it, that he had committed out of love for her – her mind shied from it, again and again. But it haunted her dreams, feeling through his muscles the weight of her own dead body, the taste of her own dead lips. Over it was always the echoing accusation of his mother's voice, _If you would hold one above all the others_.

Perhaps it was simply unnatural. Perhaps human and alien was just too large a gulf to cross. She would think it, feel the truth of it – and then have it blotted out when Jason wrapped his small arms around her neck. To believe their love was wrong was to believe Jason should not exist. And there was no truth in that. Could never be. She would not allow it, even if it meant bending the whole universe into a new shape.

In time, she caught herself looking across the newsroom at Clark, across the living room at Superman, and feeling the old familiar ache, the draw, primal even as it was less fierce, deeper even as it was less desperate than she remembered. But it was always counterweighted by the fact that he had taken from her the one thing she valued most, her independence, her very free will, her knowledge of him and what they were to each other. What they were to each other – a love like the world had never known. And he had turned his back on it, turned her back on it.

She could remember (now) being jerked back and forth between Non and Ursa, the sickening, back-breaking pain of it. She felt like that every minute of every day.

They finally had to tell Jason that Mommy and Daddy weren't going to live together any more, and everything receded behind trying to help him survive that. He became despondent, regressing to behaviors he had long since given up. He clung to them both, and cried easily. Anger manifested, and with it his strength. Superman had to step in, and Jason retreated from him, despite their best efforts he connected this change in his home to the revelation that this stranger was part of his family. His awe and his anger got all mixed up, tossed in with the isolation being thrust upon him by his emerging abilities. Lois laid down night after night to lonely bitterness and confusion. The light seemed to be being slowly squeezed from their lives.


	38. Chapter 38

Patience. It was what his mother counseled. His mother Martha, that was. Jor-el and Lara had nothing for him here, no pre-recorded, anticipated response. Why, he could not fathom. He searched the archives of Krypton and found the traces there, the hints at the biological connection between his people and humans, so the possibility had always existed that he could father a child. Perhaps they did not acknowledge it so that he could not imagine it – all part of the general thou shalt not interfere directive. Perhaps, in the midst of Krypton's technologically-assisted, medically-manipulated gestation process that had long since separated sex from reproduction, they had simply forgotten how easy a thing it was to create a life. Since he'd woken the Fortress the voices there seemed to be what they truly always had been, vestiges of a lost past. _Though you have been raised as a human being, you are not one of them. _A three thousand year old admonition that he had let rule his life. But it was Martha's wisdom that spoke to him at last. Simple, down-home, human wisdom.

"Lois," she barely looked up at his quiet voice beside her desk.

"What?" she asked curtly.

"Do you think there'd be some time that Jason could visit the farm?"

She turned startled eyes on him.

"You could come too," he said. "It might do you some good to get away from the city for a weekend."

"Wh- what am I supposed to tell Richard?" she asked, instinctively searching for some reason to refuse this suggestion.

"I want to tell him the truth," he said, watching her with a cautious gaze. "There's no reason he shouldn't know."

"You trust Richard with your secret identity after, what? Six months?" she snapped. The accusation was unspoken but there, _when you kept it from me for so long._ Another reason for her to be angry with him.

"It's not that I trust him more. It's that things are different." He said the next gently, "I don't want to keep making the same mistakes. Besides Jason needs to know, and it won't be workable for Richard not to in that case."

She looked away and her face was hard. Protecting herself. That's what she was thinking of – how she could keep from being hurt again. He knew how much pain she had endured for loving him. "I don't know, Clark," she said at last. She sounded tired.

"My mother would like to meet him," he said. "If it would help, I'll stay away. But – " he hesitated, finding it difficult to say the rest, "she's not going to live forever, Lois. And it hasn't been easy, raising me. It would bring her such joy to see him, to know you."

Her eyes closed wearily, "Okay." She nodded, "Yes, all right. Maybe I can get some sleep there. God knows, I'll be bored out of my mind in a place called Smallville."

He couldn't help but laugh softly. Lois even gave a brief, cynical smile.

"We'll meet you there," she said. "You should be the one to introduce him to his grandmother."

He simply nodded, and moved away. But he paused at the door. "Thank you," he said.

* * *

He approached Richard nervously at the office, and asked if he'd like to have lunch that week. Then he casually spoke about his youth in Kansas, letting the other man put it together on his own. Richard only choked on his sandwich for a moment before shaking his head.

"Is there anything else? Seriously, I'd rather have all the rest of it in one shot."

"That's all," Clark told him.

"So, it was never really indigestion?" Richard asked.

"I once swallowed a bomb," Clark confessed sheepishly. "Not much bothers my stomach."

Richard laughed out loud and then they lapsed into silence, which was common between the two of them. This one felt a tiny bit easier than they had ever shared before. After a moment Richard asked, "She's still pissed at you?"

Clark sighed, looking down. "She has good reason."

Richard gave him a rueful look. "That makes it worse. At least when she's just flying off the handle it tends to dissipate quickly."

"After what I did, things may never heal," he said it carefully, completely aware that such a thought opened opportunities. He wanted to like Richard, but still could not fully forgive him the years with Lois, in her bed, in her heart, raising his child.

After a long pause Richard said, "I'm seeing someone."

Clark blinked, and tried to cover his feelings with politeness. "Where'd you meet her?"

"The Journalists of America conference in April. She's from Kansas too, funnily enough. She grew up in Kansas City." He shot the other man a crooked smile, "I think she's more my speed than Lois was, any way. I could do with a few less otherworldly adventures in my life."

"That's good then," it came out awkwardly, and he cast about for a way to keep the conversation going. "What's her name?"

"Chloe. Chloe Sullivan."

* * *

Lois slowed the rented car as the asphalt ended. Jason leaned forward at this new and bumpy experience. Since they left the airport and started the two hour long trek to the farm, he'd been immensely curious about the rural landscape and the still fields of wheat surrounding them. "Where do people go to work?" he asked.

"They work right here, honey," she told him, glancing once again at the instructions for finding the house. Did these people not know how to put up a road sign? She had no idea if she was on the enigmatically named Pemiscot County Route 3, or not. Clark's instructions to "just ask anyone you see in town" made her extremely uncomfortable. She did not bother to reflect on how ironic it was that she could accost a President, but the thought of asking directions from a small town general store owner practically gave her hives.

"But there are no buildings for offices," Jason pointed out.

"They work on the farms. On the land," she explained.

He frowned and stared around. "I don't see any desks," he said skeptically.

She laughed, "No, Jason. They don't use desks. They use tractors. Look there." She pointed to a combine parked in the yard beside a small farm house.

"But what do they do?"

"They're growing food. Those plants, that's bread, before it's made into loafs, and cut for your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches," she said.

"Really?" He sat back to think about that for a bit.

At last she spotted the big yellow house he had described, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the mailbox with neat box lettering, faded by the weather – KENT.

"Here we are," she said. Okay, so maybe it wasn't the idea of asking directions that made her feel stiff, maybe it was this whole thing. It felt far too intimate to be coming here.

They pulled into the drive, bouncing over rain washed ruts, and got out. The second the car door slams sounded, the screen door creaked wide open and a spry gray-haired woman stepped out onto the porch with a smile a mile wide. She wiped her hands on her apron and called over her shoulder, "Clark, they're here!"

Lois lifted her shoulder bag and put her hand on Jason's back to direct him towards the wooden steps as Martha came down to greet them, her shining eyes fixed on the boy.

"My lord, would you look at that face? And so tall! Hello, sweet boy, I'm your Grandma Martha. Give me a hug!" And she bent to wrap thin arms around him. Her warm voice had instantly captured him, and though he kept his hands at his sides, he smiled a little at the embrace.

Martha straightened, "And Lois, it's wonderful to see you!" She reached to clasp Lois' hands in both of hers. "We met, oh, it was years ago, you probably don't even remember. Come on in the house – Clark will get your bags. Come on now, I've got chicken pot pie in the oven and fresh sweet corn. You never tasted anything so delicious!"

Lois was bemused at the middle American charm the woman exuded, and followed her up the steps, moving slowly as she looked about. The whole thing was just so… Norman Rockwell. It didn't seem quite real. She looked up then and stopped on the top step.

Clark stood in the doorway – and she had never seen him like this. He wore old beat up jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. No glasses. His hair was mussed in a way that said he'd been working, and he looked a little dusty. He didn't look like the Clark she'd known, and he didn't seem to be Superman either. He smiled at her, then crouched down to greet Jason.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"It smells like dirt here," Jason said.

Clark nodded, laughing lightly. "That it does."

"I like it," the boy said.

"Wait until you smell dinner," Clark told him.

Martha smiled as she patted Clark's massive shoulder and took Jason's small hand to lead him into the house. Clark straightened and turned to Lois as he held the door open for her. "How was the trip?"

"Good," she said. "Fine." Her eyes were still wandering over him, trying to get used to the sight of him as just – himself. After a moment, she remembered herself and stepped into the living room. The place was spotless, but everything in it was a little bit worn. The house smelled of wood and cloth and hearty food. The floor creaked as she walked across it. "You know," she said at last, "I never quite believed it. Sweet, gray-haired old mother, wholesome farmland and all that."

"You didn't disbelieve – you just didn't know what it was."

"And this," Martha's voice floated in from the kitchen, "is Shelby."

"Cool – a dog!" Lois looked through the doorway to see Jason throwing his arms around a large shaggy-haired mutt.

Lois opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

"Don't worry, Lois, you can take the boy out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the boy. We won't corrupt him completely." Clark was grinning at her. "Go on into the kitchen so Ma can start feeding you. I'll get the suitcases."

* * *

A/N: I tell you Richard keeps surprising me! I didn't expect to be able to work a Smallville nod into this story. But I rather like the idea of him ending up with an AU Chloe - who most assuredly will lead him into some otherworldly adventures, despite his best intentions. ;)


	39. Chapter 39

When Jason finally looked up from his plate of crusty pastry and rich sauce it was to peer at Martha and ask, "Can you fly?"

She laughed, her kind old eyes going crinkly at the corners, "Only if Clark helps me. Never cared much for it really."

Jason thought about that. "Can only boys fly by themselves?"

"No, honey," Lois said. "It's not to do with boys or girls. Clark is from Krypton so he can fly. He's your father, so there's a good chance you'll be able to fly. If he were to father a daughter, there'd be a good chance she could fly." It was out of her mouth before she realized. Clark, annoyingly (and rather charmingly), blushed and looked down at his plate at the implication. Lois reminded herself again that she wasn't about to get suckered in by all this down-home wholesomeness. Not after what he'd done.

Clark cleared his throat a bit nervously to get past the awkward moment, and the fiery stare Lois had leveled at him. "Would you like to go flying, Jason? When we're done eating?"

"Yes!" the boy said, raising up in his chair. "Can we go really fas-"

Clark was suddenly standing, moving toward the door. "I'll be back," was all he said. Then there was a breeze and the screen door slapping against its jamb.

Martha said to Jason, "Pass the pepper, please. And sit down properly in your chair, dear."

"Where'd he go?" Jason asked, still staring out the door.

"Oh, to fix something," Martha said. "Tell me about your favorite teacher at school."

As Jason began to talk about Amalia, Lois took another bite, reflecting briefly on just how good home grown vegetables tasted, and trying not to think about how strange it was for this simple old farmer before her to accept the miraculous as utterly familiar.

Clark was back in under an hour, and while he took Jason flying, Martha broke out photo albums. Lois began to feel fully railroaded, especially since Mrs. Kent made no secret of her motives in talking about Clark's childhood. ("He had a heart of gold from the age of three, I swear." "Always thinking of others." "Never seen a boy be more sorry for breaking something.") At the same time she couldn't resist her intense curiosity, and she poured over the images, seeking some clue or insight or... she didn't really know what. But she was fascinated by the rural scenes, him at seven crouched down beside his father as Jonathon repaired a tractor, him at five scooping food out of a big feed bag for a dog, him at three, naked in a bathtub making soap sculptures from his hair, laughing – and God help her, Jason was his absolute spitting image at that age except for his eyes and his hair.

"Scared me to death, every day of my life," Martha was saying when Lois became aware of her surroundings again.

"What did?"

"Trying to raise him up, keep him safe," Martha said. "It was bad enough when he was little and all we wanted to do was keep him hidden. But now! Fighting monsters and nuclear bombs. Turn a mother's hair white, that will."

Completely against her will, Lois said, "Tell me about it. About finding him. Getting him through childhood. He told me a ...," precious stolen memories finally restored, his easy acceptance of giving everything up for her, the pain he'd gone through, the disaster that followed –all of it choked her for a moment, "a little," she finished.

Martha began to speak, telling her everything, from the smell of smoke and dirt of the crater all the way to Jonathon's death, and Clark's discovery of his heritage – twelve long years away. That scared Lois more than anything, the idea of her son disappearing for twelve years, but she made herself face it. There was no telling what Jason might one day have to do. And with each passing minute that stretched into an hour, then two, she came to a deeper understanding of how complicated Clark was, and how simple.

"Thank you," she said, when Martha at last fell silent.

"Oh, honey," tears were standing in Martha's eyes, "thank you. I've never been able to talk to another woman about him, about being his mother, all the troubles and fears and wonders of it. There's never been anyone to share that with. But now there's you. And you've given me such a beautiful grandson. There's no way I can ever thank you enough."

Lois looked down to hide her own mistiness, but Martha knew anyway and patted her hand. Next thing they knew the boys had landed on the porch and Jason came swarming in, red-cheeked and bouncing with the thrill of flight. Lois hugged him and as he swung on her neck chattering excitedly, she glanced up to see Clark still by the door, transfixed and achingly handsome, beaming with pleasure and pride as he looked at his son. For a moment their eyes caught, held, and Lois gingerly, carefully, smiled at him.


	40. Chapter 40

Lois groaned and covered her face with a pillow, turning over on the overly soft, musty-smelling mattress. A rooster was crowing the dawn. A real, live, god damn rooster crowing – over and over and over. Even after three days, she still had the sense that this place just had to be a joke. She certainly wouldn't put it past Clark to engineer something so elaborate. Knowing that he hadn't, that this was entirely genuine (that he was entirely genuine), just made it that much more irritating. As she drifted back into a half-sleep, she dreamt, and when she woke suddenly a few minutes later at another sound, the fuzzy-lit images her mind had conjured of soft lips and strong hands on her body made her curse herself along with the stupid bird outside.

She rolled over and looked out the window to try to identify what had made her snap awake and sat bolt upright in bed when she saw Jason shoot straight up past her second floor window, screeching in utter delight. She was at the window when he passed back by on his way down from a height of at least seventy feet.

"CLARK!"

He caught the boy easily and they both looked up sheepishly at her.

"Sorry, Lois," he said as she leaned out the window, glaring daggers at him. "You know I wouldn't let him get hurt."

She opened her mouth, and then shut it, jerking her head back inside the house, furious. Because of course there was no danger in it. She fell back onto the bed and covered her face with her hands.

There was no denying that this visit was doing wonders for Jason. After so much tension and change, something about being able to be Clark as Clark, rather than Superman, was making all the difference in the world. Some of the confusion had fallen away, and an easy familiarity was taking its place, little by little. Which was wonderful, and, to her, terribly dangerous. It was so much easier to hold onto her anger when Jason was struggling. Now, this warmth, this tenderness – it was really starting to get to her.

Lois sighed, got up and dressed and went down to help Martha with breakfast, and she only rolled her eyes a little when she glanced at the clock and saw the ungodly time of 6:57 glowing on the display.

Around mid-morning, Lois, still trying to shake this growing sense of easiness which was doing nothing but making her uneasy, went for a walk while Jason and Shelby played fetch with Martha's watchful eye on them. She'd thought Clark was off somewhere busily being a hero, but she turned the corner around an old wooden storage shed and saw the family cemetery on a gentle knoll behind it. Clark was there sitting on the ground, talking to his father's grave. It was such a human moment to witness, and it reminded her of how much he had lost, and how much he had to carry, and it made her feel, as usual, petty and small.

But how could she forgive him?

Even that question, which had been shouting in her mind since he told her the truth, given the truth back to her, grew quiet as he turned his head, hearing her coming through the grass, and now she had to continue toward him as he stood, framed in the golden sun, his hair ruffling in the breeze. Just the sight of his muscles swelling gently against the old plaid shirt made heat explode in her belly and seep slowly through her legs.

She made her way up the small hill, acutely aware of the country quiet and his eyes on her. He turned when she stepped up beside him and her gaze followed his.

_Jonathon Kent_

_Beloved Husband and Father_

"I wish Jason could have met him," Clark said softly. "He was the best man I ever knew. At least he'll be able to see and hear Jor-el one day, but Pa is lost to him."

"Jor-el?" she said. "What about Lara?"

A shadow passed over Clark's face. "She never came back after…" he looked away, off toward the north. After a moment he went on, "Even when I regrew the Fortress, somehow, every memory bank of her was gone."

_There's always a price,_ she thought. Everyone believed him to be invulnerable, imagined Superman as never knowing pain.

"It'll be good for him to see something of Krypton. One day. I suppose we should wait awhile before – _I_ should wait awhile," he corrected himself, and she could see the difficulty it caused him, having to be so careful not to push at the hard boundaries she had set up between them, "before showing him the Fortress. Give him time to get used to everything first."

Lois nodded, and neither of them spoke for a long moment. She realized she was staring into his eyes, those eyes of impossible blue; he was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off of him, a warm, low glow.

"I don't want you to think," she said at last, "that I'm not still angry with you. Because I am."

He nodded slightly, "I know."

"I still can't believe you'd do something so selfish," her voice rose, shook a little as the emotions came slamming home again, "so immature, so completely and utterly out of bounds. When I think of it I become ill and hate you and wish we'd never even met and you just stand there all heroic and everyone constantly thinking you're a good guy and I want to scream to high heaven –" She cut herself off abruptly, staring fiercely at him. "God, why don't you ever fight back? Why don't you tell me, in moments like this, to just shut up, or get some anger management, or –"

"Because I think you're pretty beautiful when you're mad, Lois."

Her hands came up, her fingers clawed and she nearly shouted, "I could just choke you!"

He gave her a regretful look, as if he completely understood her frustration and hated having to add to it, "No. You couldn't."

"OH!" her right fist clenched and she shook it at him, right under his nose.

Clark blinked, "What was that?"

"I can't make obscene gestures any more, with Jason around all the time," she said brusquely.

"So you shake your fist at people?"

"Yes," she said.

Clark stared at her for a moment, and then burst out laughing. Lois had to turn away quickly, lest he see the smile she was struggling, and failing, to keep off her face. As his laughter faded into chuckles, she felt him come closer to her back, and knew he could hear her heart racing. Lois tried to breathe calmly, but as the moment stretched she knew she was becoming lost, all over again, lost as she'd been from that moment when he'd first snatched her out of the sky. _Easy, miss._

_I've got you._

His voice was very quiet, "I'll wait, you know, as long as you want me to. As long as it takes. Even if that is forever."

When she spoke it was so close to silent that if it had been anyone else, they wouldn't have heard her. "Yes."

Her hair stirred, so softly it could have been the wind, but she knew it was his fingers, knew he hadn't been able to stop himself from touching some part of her.

"Okay," he whispered. "Okay."

One of them had to walk away. Neither of them did.

Lois opened her eyes, amazed to find that they had been closed, turned, and they were in each other's arms in a heartbeat, without thought or intention or anything other than a force not unlike gravity – natural, physical, fundamental. As she felt his arms along her back, lifting her off the ground, his lips soft as the warm sun rays, as her fingers curled in his hair, Lois knew the purest sort of happiness. And when she pulled back an inch, opening her eyes to find them floating, she didn't think even Clark had realized they'd taken off.

He caressed her cheek with a tender fingertip as pain flickered through his eyes. "I'm sor-"

She laid a finger over his lips and shook her head. He kissed her softly and held her in a close embrace.

"But don't think I won't bring it up the next time you piss me off," she whispered in his ear and he laughed, carrying her into the stratosphere.

* * *

Martha had Jason help her carry the fried chicken and potato salad and fresh greens out to the picnic table that sat in the shade of the huge old oak Clark used to climb when he was a little boy. She was happy with the early spring, for it meant a good long growing season for the wheat. As Jason set the heavy paper plates out at each place with the concentration only a four year old can give to setting the table, Martha turned in no direction in particular and called out.

"Clark, lunch is ready!"

Jason looked up curiously and she waved a hand at him, "Oh, he'll be right along."

"What about Mama?"

Martha looked over his head, out across the field, and nodded in that direction. "I reckon he found her all right," she said.

Jason turned around and didn't see the knowing smile settle onto his grandmother's face at the sight of Lois and Clark coming towards them hand in hand.

Lois took Jason's face in her hands and kissed him tenderly before they all took their places around the table and the serving was set to with dishes crisscrossing the table and Jason repeatedly rising up and everyone petting Shelby as she circled them, eagerly wagging her tail, looking hopeful for a treat or two. As they ate, Martha teased Jason and Clark and smiled warmly to hear the family laugh in between enthusiastic compliments on her cooking. Clark blew flies away, and at least ten of them ended up in Oklahoma to buzz around picnics there. He held Lois's hand, resting on the red checked tablecloth, and he and Jason finished off a whole apple pie all by themselves. They all sat quiet and content in the long afternoon, Jason leaning a little sleepily against his grandma.

His heavy eyelids blinked and then widened as his little head cocked slowly. "What's that sound?" he asked.

Martha was rocking him ever so slightly, smiling at the way Clark was looking at Lois. "What sound, honey?"

He shook his head. "I never heard it before," he said in his piping little boy voice. "It's like… singing, but not voices. It's getting louder, a little bit at a time."

A slow smile was breaking on Clark's face as he put an arm around Lois, who leaned in against him. "Is it coming from the tree?"

Jason concentrated, his smooth brow knitting as he turned his ear toward the big oak. "Yes."

"It happens every spring," he said. "One of the prettiest sounds on earth."

Lois asked, "What are you two talking about? I can't hear a thing."

"Not from here," Clark said. "But if you put your ear to the tree you might be able to catch a little of it. They're being born."

"Who is?" she asked, trying not to lose her ability to speak as she was transfixed by the simple reality of seeing him, feeling him, coming back at last to loving him without reservation.

Clark Kent looked at his son, his mother, his love, and finally knew his place without question. Here, on this earth, with his family.

"The bees."

THE END


End file.
